One man’s double identity exposes an age old secret that he has been living with since birth. Eddie Redmayne is “The Danish Girl”. Based on a true story that was set in Copenhagen, during the early 1920s, Danish artist, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander), painted her own husband, Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne), as a lady in her painting. When the painting gained popularity and much deserved notoriety for Gerda, Einar started to change his appearance into a female appearance and named himself Lili Elbe. With his feminism passion screaming to come out, and Gerda’s support, Einar, or Elbe attempted first-ever male to female sex reassignment surgery, a decision that turned into a massive change for their marriage, that Gerda realized her own husband is no longer a man or the person she married before. A childhood friend of Einar, art dealer Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), shows up and starts a complex love triangle with the couple. Through many complex challenges and the fight to hang on to the last shred of her husband’s identity, Gerda must choose between her own happiness and that of her fading husband.

“The Danish Girl” takes its audience on a ride that flows quite smoothly in rich colors and gorgeous camera angles, but it’s ride lacks anything of any real intrigue or incite to be faithful to the transgendered audience that it is trying to capture. For most of the film’s two hour run time, the movie makes Einar’s condition that of someone with split personality disorder instead of a transgendered tortured soul just screaming to get out. The material certainly does a disservice to anyone in the audience not well versed with such a movement. Instead of hitting the issue head on, director Tom Hooper’s film tiptoes around the important issues, and then is left unanswered properly by film’s end. The movie portrays the sex change as a change to everything else in Einar’s psychology. Because he is now a woman, he will have no feelings for the love of his life in Gerda, and it just didn’t make sense to me. I’m not sure if the film is hinting at the forbidden nature of lesbianism during the 1920’s, but it never makes itself clear. Besides this, Lili has also decided to stop painting because that was Einar’s profession. I get that a new identity should create new opportunities, but I don’t understand why Lili wouldn’t accept a gift that she is so talented at. The film also deals with pacing issues. It’s not that the film is boring, but Hooper’s presentation lacks anything of excitment until the final ten minutes to keep his audience through a mundane effort. The movie just kind of glided along without keeping my interest to anything of intrigue.

Now onto the good. There is plenty to appreciate in performances from this cast. For the most part, the movie keeps it’s meaningful roles pretty tightnitted, with Amber Heard being the only important character besides the love trio who I already mentioned. Redmayne once again commands great depth and dedication to the roles he portrays. The script doesn’t give him enough moments of anger due to the tough choices that his new identity commands of him, but Redmayne’s Lili has a soft demeanor that makes her easily presentable. Redmayne is overshadowed however by the up-and-coming star of the Summer Alicia Vikander. This shooting star cast a spell on the audience, and kept us there with unbelievable emotional range along the way. Her eyes are left in tears for a majority of the film, and Alicia delivers such a sadness with such ease. The on-screen chemistry between Vikander and Redmayne make this believable union that much more heartbreaking when their marriage is thrown on the rocks. It is in its two main stars that “The Danish Girl” communicates the real meaning in the story. Without the investment in the characters, the film falls apart halfway through, and the Redmayne/Vikander team gives us plenty of original dramatic moments in a business that plays to repetition.

From the other side of the camera comes grace and astonishment, as Hooper’s eye for detail blends well with Cinematographer Danny Cohen’s soft colorful pallate. The film explores a wonderful framing option for its cast, as many one on one expositional scenes cut back and forth with each actor on a different side of the screen. It’s almost like the two actors are in the same shot, but the cut after each line of dialogue gives it a nice style choice. The wardrobe and style choices for the film’s characters is also done with tasteful elegance. Copenhagen is represented quite well here, with a style of French influence during certain gala events in the film.

Overall, “The Danish Girl” searches hard for its own identity during a film in which Eddie Redmayne is finding his on-screen and Alcia Vikander is finding hers off-screen. If the story was presented with a little more flare, the dull pacing of the second act would’ve made some of the lack of faithful content to the transgendered community a little easier to take. It’s a good film, but disappointing when met with the expectations I had for this film nearly a year ago. Even said, Vikander and Redmayne give us a small piece to the bigger actors pie that they will be offering to the academy for years to come.

7/10