Eddie Redmayne is wonderful in this film. Incredibly well cast, he does a fantastic job portraying Lili Elbe, one of the first people to undergo gender reassignment surgery in the 1920s. I believed him as Einar (the male body in which Lili was born), and, even more so, I believed him as Lili. And I believed him when he was stuck in between.
And don’t even get me started on Alicia Vikander as Gerda, Einar’s loving and devoted wife. If the film is true to life, then Gerda was an astounding woman for her time—so much more than the fearful, fragile housewife one would expect to find in this story—and Vikander played her the way she deserved to be played: brilliantly.
Oh, and the tagline is lovely: “Find the courage to be yourself.”
Don’t be afraid. I won’t smite you. Probably.