The MacMahonian believes in accentuating the positive: praise given when needed, encomium bestowed if deserved, exception taken only when warranted. Life's too short for bashing and there's plenty out there to marvel at. If faced with dross, silence is often the preferable option. But it is also the critic's responsibility to call a dud a dud, especially when it seems poised for undeserved fame, as appears to be the case of The Danish Girl.
The Danish Girl is the 5th feature film directed by Tom Hooper, who besides a 20 year career in TV directing penned inter alia an adaptation of Les Mis (2012) which I was careful not to watch and the unspeakable and pour cause oscarised The King's Speech (2010).
The Danish Girl is loosely based on the true story of Roaring 20s Danish transgender pioneer Lili Einar (Eddie Redmaine, making faces to look feminine/sissy, to dismal result) who changed sex in her mind before proceeding to do likewise in her body, to the pain and bewilderment of her wife Gerda ( Alicia Vikander, easily the best thing in the film, not that there's much competition…) who nonetheless lovingly supported Lili through the process until (spoiler alert) incipient pioneer surgery aftereffects result in Lili's death.
The Danish Girl's script isn't half bad and the story is allowed to develop organically, from playful cross-dressing to heartbreaking identity crisis to final denouement as feminine soul trapped inside a masculine(ish) body. It’s the direction that ranges from the soap opera-ish to the descriptive/rhetorical to the downright lame, as when Redmaine tries to hide his dick between his legs in front of the mirror and strike Venusian poses. Everything proceeds by numbers except every 10 minutes or so when we are treated to pale/pastel Scandinavian interiors, incongruous romantic landscape photography or a much belaboured contre-plongé dialogue sequence in a Jugendstil staircase (don't ask).
As previous filmography abundantly documented, as far as Hoopers go, Tom sure ain't no Tobe. Had the former a 4th of the latter's pizzazz, The Danish Girl would certainly looked very different. But to look beyond mere coincidental eponymia, for a vastly more disturbing portrayal of sexual ambiguity I'd recommend benchmarking with David Cronenberg's M Butterfly (1993).