Tom Hooper‘s gender-identity period drama The Danish Girl is meant to usher in a better semblance of understanding regarding trans people for those uneducated on the trans experience. It’s about late Danish artist and trans pioneer Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne), who in 1930 became one of the first people to undergo gender transition surgery, a journey she embarked upon with the full support of her wife, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). The story’s presented in the most palatable way possible for wide audiences: exquisite costumes, silky cinematography, gorgeous actors and grand orchestral swells are the film’s veil. Sweeping all that aside, however, reveals an awkward story whose character’s motivations and authenticity feel questionable at best.

Before Lili, there was Einar Wegener, a well-known, respected painter. He’s madly in love with his wife, Gerda, who’s a painter as well though she hasn’t yet achieved Einar’s level of success. Unexpectedly, an act of husbandly support by Einar turns into the most pivotal moment of his life. When standing in for one of Gerda’s models, he becomes she, the women’s clothing she dons awakening a true sense of self. She’s reborn as Lili Elbe. On a lark, she accompanies Gerda to a party and, while Gerda sees it as something of a game, Lili experiences an internal rebirth. From there, questions and threats arise, anxieties fester and mettle is tested as she pursues her her dream of reassignment surgery, though one thing that stays rock solid is the love shared between she and Gerda.

Without a doubt, as a love story, the film is tender and touching and full of integrity (most of this can be attributed to Vikander and Redmayne’s performances, the former of which approaches greatness). But there’s something seriously amiss with the film’s representation of Elbe’s psychological progression throughout the transition. In real life, Elbe spoke of herself in third person so as to express herself to a world totally ignorant to the trans experience. Redmayne does so in his portrayal as well, though his Lili feels more like someone with dissociative disorder than someone wrestling with gender identity. She fully considers Einar to be dead and forgotten, practically wiping her previous life from existence. The real Elbe blossomed into her true self, became more herself than she was before, which by most accounts is a common trans experience. But according to Hooper’s film, she suddenly transforms into someone else entirely as if she was possessed by some other being in her former years. Whether this was intended or not, that’s how it comes across, and the interpretation just feels wrong.

Redmayne’s gifts are unquestionable, but his character’s development being as misguided as it is undermines his work. It’s extraordinary to watch him move and he really seems to have unlocked his feminine side, especially when you notice his unease when Lily’s forced to wear men’s clothing. But when the script dictates that he must act like an insane person he can’t help but get tripped up. Gerda’s journey is much more compelling and logical as she walks beside Lili through the hellfire and brimstone. Vikander exudes so much love, compsassion and charisma that she steals the movie right out of Redmayne’s hands. In fact, when viewed primarily as Gerda’s story and not Lili’s, the movie isn’t half bad. Her career takes off once she starts painting Lili, though it quickly becomes clear that the romantic nature of their relationship is all but dead. Still, she has the courage and commitment to stand strong by her soul mate no matter the circumstances, and in doing so proves herself a hero. It’s a well-realized character and a stunning performance by Vikander, one of this year’s outstanding actors. Matthias Schoenaerts makes a strong impression as well as the couple’s only ally (and Gerda’s eventual lover).

It’s hard to fault Hooper and his art department’s visualization of ’30s Europe. The craftsmanship behind every bit of scenery and costuming we see is staggering, though there’s something offputting about how manicured Lili’s world is considering the uglier aspects of her story. Perhaps a rougher presentation would more appropriately reflect her state of mind. It’s a minor qualm, though, next to the idea that people may come out of this movie believing all people in transition hit some sort of identity restart button, wiping old memories away and storing them in a box somewhere. The most gorgeous pictures in the world can’t cover up phoniness, and that’s exactly what Hooper and Redmayne’s Lili feels like: phony. A pretty portrait of the wrong woman.

Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl follows the true-life gender transition of artist Einar Wegener to Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) and its effect on her marriage to fellow artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). Acting as stand-in for one of Gerda’s female models ignites a reawakening in Einar as he discovers he was meant to be a woman. Met with resistance at every turn, the reborn Lili’s only supporter is Gerda, the two of them fighting together to build a life in which Lili can finally be herself.

In a roundtable interview in San Francisco, we caught up with Hooper to talk about the film, which opens tomorrow in select cities and expands wide on Christmas.

The difference between Gerda and Lili’s way of dressing struck me. Gerda is so fashion-forward and Lili is much more traditional.
Paco Delgado is a genius. He’s the costume designer. He’s done Pedro Almodovar’s films for years. We did Les Miserables together, and I thought his eye for detail was extraordinary. We were lead a lot by the photos we have of the real Gerda and Einar. It became clear that Gerda’s eye for fashion was immaculate. One of the ways she paid the bills was doing covers for fashion magazines. What was extraordinary was that Einar was aspiring to a very different idea of the feminine, which was quite bourgeois conservative. It’s actually quite conventional—she just wants to be identified with the other half of the population. I think in that kind of anxiety to be validated as a woman she felt safer in a conventional style of clothing. It’s also interesting to me that the film doesn’t involve Lili learning to be like Gerda. Gerda’s body language is actually quite masculine.

I get quite excited by actors who are good at expressing themselves with their bodies, and Alicia and Eddie are two of the best young actors doing that kind of work.
Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of screen actors kind of act from here up (brings hand to chest). They’re so used to being in close-up [that the rest of their] body goes to sleep. I started to become very aware of it when I was doing The King’s Speech. Geoffrey [Rush] was actually mime-trained and is amazing with his body. I’d be doing close-ups with Geoffrey and I’d go, “Look at what he’s doing with his hands,” so I’d pull back and do a mid shot. Then I’d go, “Actually, I like the whole profile,” so I’d pull back again. I’d come out of that experience thinking more about body shape.

What was very interesting was that, after doing all of these things as a director, you never ever say to an actor, “I’m sorry. At that moment, you betrayed your gender. You were not convincingly a man.” You never say, “You weren’t in gender.” I’ve never actually corrected someone on their gender. The really fascinating thing was having to think about the way gender is constructed. You start thinking about to what extent culture has put pressure on us to take on a certain construction of gender and how much of it is innate. I go around now seeing much more how people have constructed themselves. It’s really affected the way I look at the world.

What was your process with Eddie when you started this journey, turning him from a he to a she?
It started with a lot of research. I was lucky enough to have a meeting with Lana Wachowski because Eddie had done a film with her. She gave us a great reading list, and through her we discovered this book by Jan Morris called Conundrum. It’s the most brilliant book about transition. We met trans men and woman. There’s a great one called April Ashley who was a famous model in the ’60s in London and had an amazing life. We sat with her, drank champagne, had tea time and listened to her life story. We did some early tests on a stills camera, and a lot of it was about this idea that we were revealing Lily rather than him transforming into Lily, this late femininity being revealed. That idea of getting him to that point of confidence where he carried the woman inside him and really start to show it and reveal it was a key concept early on.

I like the way you shot the scene where Lily is posing for Gerda for the first time. It’s like she’s rediscovering her body.
It was a very key scene. To get it right, we were showing a release into anxiety. Obviously, the discovery that she’s making in that moment carries with it a lot of stress and conflict. But it’s also this release out of anxiety and into this possibility of being her authentic self and the potential experience of joy she’d never imagined. In Lili’s memoirs, that’s the moment she talks about as being key. Of all the scenes, I think it was important to get that one right. Her body’s waking up.

Something interesting I read was that Lily often referred to herself in the third person.
In her memoirs, she talks about Einar and Lily in the third person. Eddie and I had long debates about [this]. In modern trans experience, you’d probably talk about “I” rather than talk in the third person. But we wanted to capture this period in the 1920s when there wasn’t an existing language for being a trans person. She was trying to find a way to communicate this to other people, and a way she could do it was to say that there is a struggle between Einar and Lily, and Lily has to win.

Talk about the pool of talented trans actors out there and how filmmakers like yourself can create opportunities for them. You hired a number of trans actors for this film.
I just think it’s a necessary shift. It’s all about equality of access. I still think we have a huge issue in the film industry with equality of access with women directors. It still feels like there’s sexism operating in that world. For people of color, there are barriers of access. There’s a greater fight of making sure there’s equality of actors for people who feel their voices have been marginalized. There’s a great journey to go. I think trans employment is very important. On Les Miserables, my musical director was a woman called Jennifer White. I feel like, particularly in the U.S., there are huge issues of discrimination in the workplace against trans people. If this film in any way can keep the process of shedding a spotlight on those indignities, that would be great.

This movie’s coming out at a very interesting time because of the Caitlyn Jenner story. What do you expect this to add to that conversation?
I speak from a London perspective, not an American perspective, but I think there’s a generational thing where the older generation are perhaps far less progressive in their understanding than the kids coming through now. It would be great if the film could reach those very people who are kind of closed to this narrative and open people’s hearts to caring about Lily and trans stories in general. I don’t know whether it can do that, but it would be great.

Talk about Eddie as an actor. He’s got a one-in-a-million smile, which I think is invaluable in this movie.
He has this great gift where he takes the audience with him on every step of the journey. I don’t feel Lily is “othered” by Eddie’s performance. If anything, Lily’s journey feels inevitable in Eddie’s hands. He has this gift where you understand every step. Not many actors can do that. There would be moments that would feel strange, but he has this compassion. It allowed us to go on a journey that, in theory, could have been unwatchably painful. But you stay with him. He’s also the nicest person on the planet. He went off to the Academy Awards, came back after the weekend and was completely unchanged. He’s the same guy.

Alicia is having such a year.
One of the first things I said to her was, “Because Eddie’s working so hard to be this person, don’t be lazy. Don’t think about how different Gerda differs from you. Can you be as specific with her as Eddie’s being with Lily?” I thought she really embraced that idea. Early on, she had an idea of Gerda having a personality that is more charismatic than she is herself. She’s quite a contained person. Mainly, I was intimidated by finding someone to act opposite Eddie. If you didn’t have two actors who matched each other, it would have been quite tough. I felt like Alicia had such a great, big heart. It’s this love story, and you see how Gerda has this inexhaustible source of love for Lily that helps her through this transformation.

I love Matthias Schoenaerts.
I still can’t believe he’s in my film! [laughs] I asked my casting director Nina Gold if we could ever get Matthias and she was like, “Probably not.” But he said yes! He’s like a natural film star. He’s so still and simple and powerful. There’s a calmness to him.

Two heavy Oscar hopefuls opened the Mill Valley Film Festival last night as Tom Hooper‘s The Danish Girl and Tom McCarthy‘s Spotlight played to packed movie houses surrounded by towering redwoods in downtown Mill Valley and in San Rafael just a few minutes up the road. Both directors were in attendance to introduce their respective films and participate in Q&As before the crowds hurried to the open-air Opening Night party to pass around their thoughts on the films.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

The cast of Spotlight is arguably the best ensemble you’ll see in a movie all year. If the Oscars gave out Best Ensemble statues they’d have it in the bag, hands down. Starring Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci, and Liev Schreiber (whose top-notch performance will likely go unappreciated in the coming months), the film feels dynamic and alive and spontaneous despite its true-story roots. It recounts the breaking of the Catholic church child molestation cover-up by the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” news team, an investigation that shook Boston to its core. While reviews coming out of TIFF have gotten movie lovers across the country itching in anticipation to see Tom McCarthy’s latest, I feel compelled to offer a word of warning: This is an excellent movie that’s also decidedly humble; don’t expect any loud, earth-shattering performances or slow-motion, tearful eruptions meant to entice members of the Academy. Spotlight stays right in the pocket, which is exactly where it should be.

Butterflies Are Free To Fly

One of the big shockers from the Oscars last year was Eddie Redmayne‘s Best Actor win, as many expected Michael Keaton to go home with the prize (including Keaton himself). Well, the young British charmer is in the race again with The Danish Girl, the Tom Hooper-helmed historical drama about trans icon Lili Elbe (Redmayne) and her wife, Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander). Lili’s rebirth as a woman in the 1920s (she was formerly known as Einar Wegener, a successful painter) is a staggeringly beautiful story in real life, but Hooper’s picture is too glossy and overly poetic to be truly inspiring. Redmayne exudes femininity and is as good on-screen as ever, and Vikander is his equal, but the dialogue is so maudlin that many moments, especially later in the film, feel hollow and disingenuous. The actors are knockouts across the board, though. Matthias Schoenaerts, Amber Heard, and Ben Wishaw round out a wonderful supporting cast, though the film never provides a solid enough platform for them to look and sound their best.

At this time last year, The Theory of Everything was a week away from its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, and its star, Eddie Redmayne, was just a 32-year-old British scamp ready to shock the world with his performance as Stephen Hawking. A year later, Redmayne has positioned himself to become the first actor since Tom Hanks in ’94/’95 to win back-to-back golden statues. The Danish Girl reunites Redmayne with Les Miserables director Tom Hooper for an unexpectedly topical biopic co-starring Alicia Vikander, Amber Heard, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Ben Whishaw.

Telling the story of transgender woman Lili Elbe, one of the first identifiable recipients of sexual reassignment surgery. Born in 1880s Denmark as Einar Magnus Andreas Wegener, Lili became an artist and married her wife Gerda Gottlieb before discovering she came to her gender identity realization. The soft lighting, period setting, and expositional dialog all seem reminiscent of director Hooper’s last sweeping Oscars success, The King’s Speech; however, the depiction of Lili’s transition from a man to a woman is bound to become a discussion point as The Danish Girl aims to be part of awards conversations.

The Danish Girl premieres September 5th as part of the Venice Film Festival and will be released Stateside on November 27th.

It’s a little disjointed and a little lacking in imagination, but A Little Chaos, Alan Rickman‘s sophomore directorial offering, is kept afloat by a dazzling period aesthetic and some winning performances. It’s a classical romance set in 17th-century France but wastes no time declaring its out-and-out British-ness with a sly opening text stating that, aside from the fact that there were gardens at Versailles (the story’s key location), the film’s historical accuracy is essentially null. (We’re in France, but it’s that movie version of France we sometimes see where everyone has proper English accents.)

Kate Winslet stars (reuniting with Rickman for the first time since Sense and Sensibility) as Madame Sabine De Barra, a widowed commoner with an unorthodox eye for design who’s hired to collaborate with master landscaper André Le Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) in designing a magnificent garden at Versailles for King Louis XIV (Rickman). The esteemed Le Notre (one of the film’s few actual historical figures) is a stickler for symmetry and immaculate arrangements, and though he’s one of the most decorated landscapers in France, the King-commissioned project called for a more radical, outside-the-box vision, provided of course by Madame De Barra.

We watch as Sabine earns the respect of even her nastiest naysayers, turning snobby aristocrats into gawking admirers of her incomparable work ethic and unique brand of outdoors artistry. There’s a clear theme of gender bias and the gradual upheaval of female stereotypes, but the messaging never feels preachy. Rickman’s more concerned with Sabine’s psychological turmoil than her social deficiencies. Sabine’s driven mad by blurred visions from her past, clues Rickman uses to build a modest mystery (the payoff isn’t worth the time, but it gives the story depth of flavor at the very least). The spark between she and Monsieur Le Notre fails to catch fire due to her disturbed mental state, but the dashing dilettante’s advances persist.

Throwing a wrench in both Sabine and André’s romantic and professional pursuits is Madame Le Notre (Helen McCrory), André’s unscrupulous, socialite wife and promoter of his work. There isn’t much sizzle to the love triangle, which is about as schematic as it gets, but Winslet’s magnetism makes Sabine’s uphill battle through France’s wealthier set absorbing enough to buoy the film. She’s always been great in vulnerable roles like this; it’s breathtaking when she opens up and unleashes all of her character’s pent-up anguish and regret. She can make you hate her, too, as in her show-stealing turn in the Divergent franchise, but characters like Sabine are more in her wheelhouse.

Schoenaerts isn’t a great on-screen partner for her. He always looks sleepy and delivers his lines like some kind of broody vampire. Rickman has more success; when the King feels the full weight of the crown bearing down on his head, his subjects crowding in on him like lurching zombie servants, he finds solitude in Sabine’s company, her high-class naiveté making her a cooling oasis in a desert of empty affluence. A lovely scene between them in a private garden is the best in the film, a charming volley of breezy candor. Also adding a bit of queen-y fun to the proceedings is Stanley Tucci as the King’s prancing, purple brother, because that’s kind of all he’s been doing in movies lately.

Sabine and André’s garden is first and foremost an easy metaphor for their relationship, but it’s more enjoyably consumed as a stunning piece of set design (especially when it’s inevitably completed, cascading waterfalls and all). Costuming is always a primary appeal for a period piece, and A Little Chaos delivers with staggeringly detailed garments Rickman takes good care to show off (an early series of close-ups shows Rickman’s kingly attire being draped on piece by piece). The landscapes are scrumptious as well, particularly a country path tracing a sea of azure flowers and painterly trees.

The strange backdrop of large-scale gardening helps to alleviate A Little Chaos‘ unimaginative narrative structure, but once you fall into the film’s rhythm, you’ll be putting plot pieces together five steps ahead. Rickman’s storytelling is rigid as all hell (and cloyingly sentimental), but as actors, he and Winslet are on their game, and these two are always worth watching. No minds will be blown, but there’s enough whimsy and charm here to put a smile on your face.

In what will more than likely go down as the biggest disappointment of the year in film for me, Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone isn’t something that I would label as bad but I certainly couldn’t call it very good either. After three straight works of brilliance, this is definitely a step back for him as a filmmaker, though more than anything else that’s due to his screenplay (he co-wrote again with Thomas Bidegain, his collaborator on A Prophet). There isn’t much to fault here when it comes to Audiard’s direction; Rust and Bone is a visceral punch to the gut at times, and there’s a palpable physicality in the lives of these two characters which he is able to capture with a strength that few others would be able to succeed at on this level.

No, the problem here is in the writing, which is all over the place in terms of its narrative, its characters and its authenticity. Rust and Bone centers on the relationship between the brutish Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) and the recently crippled Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), the two coming together early on after a horrific accident that leaves her without her legs. Whenever the film is focusing on the relationship between these two, it is absolutely on point. The contrast between the incredibly physical presence of Ali and the emotional struggles that Stephanie faces when her physicality is taken away from her is poignant, and both actors deliver phenomenal performances.

Schoenaerts, who exploded onto the scene with his powerful work in Bullhead, has an immediately intimidating approach that makes you fear him but he fuses this character with so much heart that it’s hard not to root for him, even when he’s making mistakes when it comes to his career or parenting his young son. Cotillard provides the perfect contrast, matching that physical, internal approach with a devastating rawness that is absolutely heartbreaking. Audiard manages his leads well and has two actors who deliver in every moment, shining individually but even brighter when they are able to share the screen. It’s when the two are split up that the script begins to fall apart, with subplots that don’t add much of anything, thin supporting characters and glaring narrative contrivances.

Even with the extensive 155-minute running time of the much more subtle A Prophet, Audiard created a pace that move it along so well that it never dragged for a moment, but running at a brisker 120-minute duration this one feels like it runs at least an hour longer. Rust and Bone ratchets the drama up to a level that is strangely aggressive for Audiard, hitting the audience far too loud at times without ever achieving the kind of emotional strength that Read My Lips or The Beat That My Heart Skipped were able to. For the first time, Audiard lets the melodrama control his picture more, presenting it in a way that embraces that as opposed to presenting the more gritty, authentic approach that he has shown such skill within.

This becomes especially troublesome in the film’s final act, where the contrivances are taken to an eye-rolling extreme that actively works against that raw emotional anguish Cotillard and Schoenaerts bring to their roles. Rust and Bone probably has a little more going for it than it does against, but with Audiard’s magnificent track record going into it, the inconsistencies in the writing are surprising and very disappointing. The two leads deliver incredible work, but this is a prime example of how much a bad script can impact an overall picture.

Yesterday a new trailer was released for the French film Rust and Bone. The new film, directed by Jacques Audiard, looks to be an emotional stunner. The film had its world premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where it received pretty good reviews. The film stars Matthias Schoenaerts as Alain, a man who (with his young son) moves in with his sister and her husband. Soon he becomes entangled with a young woman (Marion Cotillard) who is a killer whale trainer. His love for her only intensifies after she suffers a tragic accident.

Audiard was last seen with his brilliant crime film A Prophet and before that in his even better The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Both are highly recommended if you haven’t already had the pleasure of seeing them. Cotillard was of course last seen in Christopher Nolan’s final blockbuster of his Batman trilogy The Dark Knight. Rust and Bone had its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival recently and will now go to Toronto next week.

Watch the official trailer for Rust and Bone: