The Danish Girl is an adaptation of a novel written by a man about Lili Ilse Elvenes, a Danish transgender woman who wrote an autobiography, Man into Woman, which was published posthumously. As I watched The Danish Girl, many things bugged me as I watched the movie.
First, I don’t think there was a single Danish person in the cast. The Danish Girl is set in different locations, including Denmark, yet the majority of the cast consisted of British people. Alicia Vikander is Swedish so I suppose the casting director though that was close enough. The Danish accent is nowhere close to a British accent and is lovely in its own right. Seriously, you made a movie called The Danish Girl, and there was not one single Danish girl.
Second, the real main character is not the transwoman, but the survival of the marriage. The complication in their marriage could have been anything else, but in this case, it happened to be that the husband was a transwoman. I thought that was peculiar. The viewer never looks at things from the transwoman’s point of view, but is constantly viewing the transwoman from different perspectives. The transwoman is the object of attention.
Third, The Danish Girl allows Lili to express frustration that the medical community treats her as if she is insane, but the movie is somewhat guilty of doing the same thing. The Danish Girl depicts Lili as if she believes that she is two different people. The Danish Girl portrays Lili as if she gets a thrill from dressing in women’s clothes instead of finally slipping into something that suits her. The Danish Girl represents Lili as if she is exploring her bisexuality. If The Danish Girl was the only cultural product available that illustrates trans people’s lives, maybe it could get away with it, but it isn’t. We are living in a golden era of trans representations that includes Boys Don’t Cry, Transamerica, Tangerine, Transparent, I Am Cait and The Dallas Buyers Club. I am not trans, and I would defer to any trans viewer who disagrees with me, but I am a consumer and usually trans people’s first story is finally becoming who you are. The Danish Girl is not as interested in getting to know Lili, but fetishizes her by just focusing on what her struggle looks like to an outsider as opposed to representing her internal struggles.
Fourth, most people have no idea what actually happened to Lili at the end of the movie. Once again, Lili is our Camille, a mysterious, fragile object of affection with emphasis on object. She dies to preserve the sanctity of the relationship-who cares why!
Finally, when I watch a movie, if I’m not riveted, I don’t wait to do my background research after the movie is finished. I was curious why The Danish Girl emphasized the relationship more than the trans issues. I knew that The Danish Girl was based on a novel, but I decided that I would have to read the novel and autobiography to see how close to reality the fictional account was. I have no problem with a man writing books about women, trans or cis. I have no problem with a filmmaker deciding to adapt a book written by a man about a woman or a transwoman. I have a problem with the fact that I can’t find the autobiography actually written by the transwoman that the novel is about. Once again, transwomen’s voices are applauded, disseminated and adapted unless they are actually written by transwomen. The Danish Girl, as a movie and a book, has inadvertently privileged the male voice and silenced the transwoman’s voice.
The Danish Girl is a slight, superficial movie that fails to wrestle with the universal theme of becoming who you are, but is more interested in impressing audiences with the sturdiness of a relationship and how convincing Eddie Redmayne was as a pretty girl.