CAPSULE: The Danish Girl (2015, Dir. Tom Hooper)

I like to think I'm comfortably forgiving when it comes to cinema. I'm willing to overlook pretty serious faults in the interests of celebrating the overall package. Sometimes, though, it is difficult. Sometimes faults run deep. And sometimes (more egregiously) they barely cut the surface.

Surface is one of many loaded term when dealing with trans* issues. When façade is invoked, identity is called into question and the slope gets slippery. It is incumbent on any artist (be they director, writer, actor or commentator) to take it upon themselves to be aware of this. I'm not going to say this necessitates the hiring of trans* creatives in any or all of those roles, only that they give any production considerable a leg up.

You can probably guess where this is leading. Having seen The Danish Girl, I'm putting it out there that Tom Hooper's film has taken as surface a route as one can take into an exploration (ostensibly) of the life of Danish gender pioneer Lili Elbe and her wife and fellow artist Gerda Wegener.

Cis-centric casting choices aside, the more pertinent controversy here is that The Danish Girl never gets to grips with its subject. Nothing gets under the skin. Everything is lipstick, silk stockings and quivering lips. This is prestige picture fodder, shot prestigiously (surface level) using award magnet stars (surface level), presenting Lili and Gerda's life to the newly concerned via a screenplay that can't bring itself to actually question gender identity without presenting it as a challenge to normalcy - something to be pitied, distrusted and shamed.

Unfortunately, Hooper goes further. Much of the drama draws not from Lili's personal identity crisis or from the much touted love between her and her wife but from a twisted demonisation of her compulsion to don dresses and walk the street a woman/herself, a discontent pressed unambiguously by Alexandre Desplat's ludicrously ominous scoring and Hooper's fetishistic framing. In short, The Danish Girl is a reductive film, ill at ease with itself or its subject matter.

I'm loathe to say it but Hooper regularly steps out of the bounds of his Oscar worthy biopic and into the murkiness of Hammer Horror's Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde.

Intention will play a major role in the marketing of this film and Hooper will talk the talk on this. He can front up at press junkets pushing the "celebrating trans* mould breaker" line and publications can swallow it if they so wish. I tend to go to audiences to gauge the success of such claims. Author intentions aside, how a film is consumed is the ultimate test of their success. The Danish Girl was met with incongruous laughter and uncomfortable shuffles.

So, not a success.

★★☆

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