While Redmayne may be the one picking up the awards nods for this film, it’s Alicia Vikander who really shines in this biographical drama. Vikander’s character, Gerda Wegener, displays a whole range of emotion as she is pulled from rejection to despair, from joy to fear. While ultimately the tragic ending does display, once again, Redmayne’s ability to play illness and dying, it’s Vikander’s performance which holds the story together and shows, crucially, how Einar’s transformation into Lili had not only an impact on his own life, but those of a great number of people around him.
Another showing from the seemily currently trendy Matthias Schoenaerts. While the film wasn’t bad both myself and Monica felt that the pace was at times too slow, and that there were a number scenes which could have easily been lost to the editing room floor without taking anything away from the film as a whole. I also came away with Alan Rickman saying in my head “I have written and will direct a film with a king in it. Who shall I cast as king? I know. Me.”