1920’s Copenhagen. Artist Einar Wegener and his wife Gerda, also an artist, are a model couple. To finish a painting, Gerda asks her husband to dress up in women’s clothing and pose for her. What starts out as a game between them gradually reveals a strong desire within Einar, who takes pleasure in dressing as a woman and going by the name of Lili. When Lili decides to become the woman she knows she is, Gerda agrees to support her.

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There was a time when Nicole Kidman moved heaven and earth in an attempt to play Einar Wegener, with a changing list of co-stars that included Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman, Marion Cotillard and Rachel Weisz. At the time, director Tomas Alfredson (Morse, The Mole) was attached. Empowered by success and Oscar wins (The King's Speech, Les Misérables), Tom Hooper eventually came on board to direct Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything), a much better choice, and Alicia Vikander, one of the great revelations of recent years (Royal Affair, Ex Machina). These two wonderful actors prevent The Danish Girl from suffering too much at the hands of a pompous and conventional filmmaker. Surrounded by a perfect supporting cast (Amber Heard, Ben Whishaw, Mathias Schoenaerts), they infuse this great love story with life and stunning emotion, making it good enough to prevent the film from being dragged down by its greatest failing – a plot that has been “cleansed”, Hollywood style, of the nonconformist facts of the original events (most notably that Einar and Gerda, a lesbian, had a marriage of convenience), to the point where the story is mainly fictional.