The Danish Girl: Woman on the Verge

Triumph-over-adversary true story. Transformative turn from Eddie Redmayne. Last year’s Oscar winner might just drive The Danish Girl from troubled inception to awards glory...

- James Mottram

Tom Hooper sighs, wearily. “Seven years ago, I was told this is a difficult film to make, to get financed. Now, I’m told it’s a timely film to do.” Such is the fickle nature of the movie business. But there can be no question that Hooper’s The Danish Girl is arriving at just the right time. Dealing with the first-ever recorded case of gender re-assignment surgery, this adaptation of David Ebershoff’s book is just one of several transgender tales to tap the zeitgeist.

“It’s become part of the mainstream, which is very exciting,” says Hooper, over coffee, when Total Film meets up with him at London’s Claridges Hotel. On television, Jeffrey Tambor recently won an Emmy for his portrayal of Maura Pfefferman, the transgender woman who comes out to her family late in life, in the Amazon series Transparent, while Orange Is The New Black had already blazed a trail with the casting of Laverne Cox – the first transgender woman to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

Others include the recent release of the low-budget transgender prostitute story Tangerine and, of course, the story of the Kardashians’ father Bruce and his transition into Caitlyn Jenner, all served up in the reality show I Am Cait. “By starting so long ago, we’ve become fashionable!” half-jokes The Danish Girl’s screenwriter, Lucinda Coxon. “We’re lucky that we didn’t make it sooner because it would’ve ended up being a much smaller film with a much smaller reach.”