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The Danish Girl
When Gerda Wegener asks her husband Einar to fill in as a portrait model, Einar discovers the person she's meant to be and begins living her life as Lili Elbe. Having realized her true self and with Gerda's love and support, Lili embarks on a groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.
2015 · Directed by Tom Hooper · 119 min · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 16 frames
Tagline
Find the courage to be yourself.
Plot
In 1920s Copenhagen, portrait artist Gerda Wegener is attending an art show to support her husband, popular landscape artist and closeted trans woman Einar Wegener. Though Gerda is talented, she hasn't quite received the same success Einar has. The following day Gerda shows some of her work to a Museum curator but he's unfortunately unimpressed. When she returns home, she asks Einar to stand in for a female model, who is running late, to pose for a painting Gerda is working on. The experience of posing for Gerda's painting creates a string of events that brings out more of Einar's feminine identity, who is eventually named Lili.
The following day, Gerda mentions going to an artist ball, but when Einar refuses to go, she suggests that he go as someone else, namely Lili, and he agrees. They spend a few days preparing Einar, learning female mannerisms and donning him with make-up, new clothes and a woman's wig. All of which helps to bring out more of Lili's identity, but Gerda misinterprets it as a game. At the ball, Lili ends up spending the night talking with Henrik Sandahl. When Gerda looks for her, she sees the two of them kissing. When she confronts Einar about it the next morning, he says Henrik was kissing Lili.
Gerda shows the curator her new portraits of Lili and to her surprise, he agrees to show them. Lili goes to visit Henrik at his home and begins kissing him but when he calls her "Einar" she leaves devastated. When Gerda comes home, Lili tells her about Henrik and while Gerda sits at the table heartbroken, Lili turns back into Einar. She assures her that Einar has no romantic feelings for Henrik but Lili does, she also tells her that as a child Lili kissed a boy named Hans until Lili's father caught them. Afterwards, Gerda takes Lili to see Doctor Hexler who opts to treat Lili with radiation but after the procedure, Lili tells him he "hurt Lili". Hexler, convinced that Lili is insane, wants to have her admitted into an insane asylum on grounds of perversion.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Lucinda Coxon
- Cinematography: Danny Cohen
- Edited by: Melanie Oliver
- Music: Alexandre Desplat
- Production design: Eve Stewart
- Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Anne Harrison, Tom Hooper
Cast
- Eddie Redmayne as Lili
- Alicia Vikander as Gerda
- Matthias Schoenaerts as Hans
- Ben Whishaw as Henrik
- Sebastian Koch as Warnekros
- Pip Torrens as Dr. Hexler
- Nicholas Woodeson as Dr. Buson
- Amber Heard as Ulla
- Emerald Fennell as Elsa
- Adrian Schiller as Rasmussen
Production
- Country: Belgium, United Kingdom, United States of America
- Language: German, French, English
- Studios: Pretty Pictures, Working Title, Artémis Productions, Shelter Productions
- Budget: $15,000,000
- Box office: $64,200,000
- Themes: paris, france, based on novel or book, denmark, copenhagen, denmark, artist, painter, historical fiction, art, transsexual, surgery
More by Tom Hooper
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