'The Danish Girl': A supremely tactile film (& not just in the erotic sense)

Sue de Groot reviews 'The Danish Girl' starring Eddie Redmayne as Einar/Lili Elbe, one of the first patients to have sex-reassignment surgery in the 1930s

Synaesthesia is a condition in which the stimulation of one sense triggers a reaction in another part of the brain. Some people can smell words ("orange" allegedly smells like chicken) and those with mirror-touch synaesthesia experience a corresponding physical sensation when watching someone else being touched.

Film pioneer Sergei Eisenstein was interested in the ability of audiovisual media to arouse the other senses, but as far as I know director Tom Hooper is the first to make a film that feels like the soft swish of a silken hem brushed softly over one's skin.

The Danish Girl is a supremely tactile film, not just in the erotic sense (there is plenty of that too) but in its protagonist's intensified awareness of bodily movement and sensation.

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From the opening frames, in which feminine reeds sway teasingly in close-up before bowing to a distant view of masculine outcrops, sensory clues are pasted on thick. Since this is the true story of Danish landscape painter Einar Wegener, scenes of lush swamps and grey fjords are to be expected, but it is also the story of Lili Elbe, the woman trapped in Wegener's body, whose sensual imagery is far more complex.

Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne plays Einar/Lili with enormous courage and a smile that shatters social boundaries. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander is Gerda, Einar's artist wife and the catalyst for Lili's metamorphosis.

In 1930, Lili Elbe became one of the first documented patients to have sex-reassignment surgery, but The Danish Girl concentrates more on the years preceding the operation and on the bond between Einar/Lili and Gerda.

Einar has an epiphany when Gerda poses him in silk stockings and pointy shoes because her portrait model has not turned up. When he admits to liking women's clothing, she gets him up in female disguise and takes him to a party. Redmayne pulls it off with nervy comic grace, but the film grows steadily darker as Lili emerges more strongly from her male carapace.

Gerda's distress turns to heartbreak as the Lili "game" becomes a reality she cannot control, but she is compassionate and intelligent enough to balk at the barbaric medical "cures" sought by a bewildered and guilt-stricken Einar.

The dialogue feels a bit contrived at times, but the unspoken narrative is as light as a chiffon scarf. It is impossible not to be viscerally touched by Redmayne's searching gaze and fluttering hands as he releases Lili from the prison that was once Gerda's uxorious husband.

The film is too glib in its interpretation of Lili's dissonance to stand as a beacon for transgender rights, but it is exquisitely shot and the performances are luminous. Vikander embodies Gerda's disintegration - from a pert young artist basking in Einar's desire to a woman hollowed out by grief but steadfast in loyalty - so deftly that she almost eclipses Redmayne.

More than anything, this is a love story. Lili is in love with the idea of life in a woman's body. Gerda, who soon paints nothing but portraits of Lili, is in love with the shadow of her husband inside Lili. The Danish Girl is a film in love with its own beauty, and Hooper misses no tricks in sweeping the audience off its feet too.

Rating: 4/5