“Adapted by Lucinda Coxon from David Ebershoff’s novel, Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl retells a true-life story: that of painter Einar Wegener, who underwent a pioneering gender reassignment operation in the 1930s to become Lili Elbe. Einar/Lili is played by Eddie Redmayne, who is certain to reap plentiful laurels in the forthcoming awards season, with another role — following his Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything — about a slow process of physical and psychological transformation. And no doubt this sumptuously mounted, high-minded and unabashedly Oscar-baiting undertaking will overall emerge dripping with honors. But well-meaning and polished as it is, The Danish Girl is a determinedly mainstream melodrama that doesn’t really offer new perspectives. It smacks more of the coffee table than the operating table.” — from a Guardian review by Jonathan Romney.

From Variety’s Peter Debruge in Venice Film festival review: “Clearly, The Danish Girl was never not going to be a ‘prestige’ picture,” “And while that ultra-respectful approach will engender allergic reactions in some, who’d sooner see a gritty, realistic portrayal than one seemingly tailored for the pages of fashion and interior-design magazines, there’s no denying that Tom Hooper and screenwriter Lucinda Coxon have delivered a cinematic landmark, one whose classical style all but disguises how controversial its subject matter still remains. In order to penetrate the conversation of ‘polite’ society, one must play by its rules, and The Danish Girl is nothing if not sensitive to how old-fashioned viewers (and voters) might respond, scrubbing the story of its pricklier details and upholding the long-standing LGBT-movie tradition of tragically killing off the ‘monster’ in the end.”