Review of The Danish Girl (2015) by Reece L — 08 Jan 2016

For a film about the very real trans experience, The Danish Girl comes off as spectacularly inauthentic, its painfully, desperately tasteful trappings choking out any sort of life that could possibly have been in this material beyond reconciliation. This is not due to a lack of good intentions, Hooper and Redmayne obviously straining to do their very best in telling the story of a trans hero with dignity and intelligence, but it's clear throughout that Hooper is operating from some severe misconceptions in regards to what it means to be a transgendered person, fetishizing clothing as a means of communicating traditional femininity and using this tactile, materialistic conduit as the primary source of laying out Lili's gendered awakening in a way that reeks of the male gaze. It perpetuates some old trans stereotypes in the process, tying gender to clothing and then tying that clothing to the concept of perception in a way that is seemingly intelligent in theory but uncomfortably regressive when executed.

Lili is imagined in this film, never real, never existing in a space other than the strict male/female binary, never an object of desire for the audience, a sexless trans woman smothered under a toxic mix of traditional beauty and misplaced good intentions. Redmayne can't help but shine despite the obvious issues associated with his being cast to play a trans woman, and Vikander does well, but they can't save The Danish Girl from falling on its face before it even begins, the work ultimately little more than a passable docudrama and a perfect example of why those outside a community shouldn't attempt to make films about the experiences of those within said community.