We loved this fictionalized story of an actual transgender woman in 1920s Copenhagen. Transcendent (sorry!) performances and stunning pictures all contribute to a glorious two hours. Fresh off winning the Oscar for another transformation (they just keep coming) in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne completely inhabits his character of Einar/Lili and Alicia Vikander (last blogged in Burnt) portrays his/her wife Gerda Gottlieb Wegener with fortitude belying her age (26 during filming, now 27). Strong supporting actors include Amber Heard (after writing about her in The Rum Diary, I saw her in Magic Mike XXL) as a lovely dancer, Ben Whishaw (most recently in Skyfall) as a gay suitor, and Matthias Schoenaerts (last in Far from the Madding Crowd) as a childhood friend, all remarkably tolerant of gender fluidity considering the movie is set 90 years ago.
Director Tom Hooper (most recently in these pages for Les Misérables) brings back some key visual crew in cinematographer Danny Cohen (after I wrote about him in The King's Speech, he shot Les Misérables and Room) for the dazzling photography, costume designer Paco Delgado (not yet blogged, but Oscar-nominated for Les Misérables, also did wardrobe for Bad Education (2004), Biutiful, and The Skin I Live In) for the magnificent silks, and production designer Eve Stewart (Oscar-nominated for Topsy Turvy (1999), The King's Speech, (profiled in that post), and Les Misérables) for the wonderful rooms. I'll be very interested to see if any score nominations from the American Society of Cinematographers, Costume Designers Guild, and the Art Directors Guild in a couple of weeks. Lucinda Coxon writes her third adaptation (the first I've seen), this time from the 2000 novel by David Ebershoff, fictionalized, as I said above.
The real Gerda was actually bisexual, a working woman in a time when that wasn't all so common, and famous for her lesbian erotic paintings. Stewart and Hooper worked with a British artist to adapt Gerda's portraits to fit the movie. Here's a little more detail.
In one of my favorite radio podcasts, The Dinner Party Download (I listen to it on bluetooth while driving around town), the interviewer says the movie's press kit included a glossary with the term cisgender, meaning one who is comfortable with one's biological gender, and Vikander tells us she attended an event called Champions of Change at the White House about three weeks ago, which inspired and touched her, not only because our current president is the first ever to utter the word "transgender" in public in office.
Seeing this today was timely for Jack and me, because we sat with Amy during her visit while she binge-watched the first season and half of the second of the marvelous Amazon series Transparent, which we had already seen but was even better the second time.
Once again Alexandre Desplat (last blogged for Suffragette) gives us lovely music to match the images and you can stream the whole soundtrack and more from this link, pausing occasionally to skip an ad.
Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are averaging only 71 and 74%. They were not paying attention. See this on your local big screen, away from the philistines' (start the video clip at 1:08) lit phone screens.
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