So the question that will arise — if only jokingly — with the premiere of the transgender movie "The Danish Girl" on Saturday at the Venice Film Festival is should Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne win another for best actor or best actress?
The British actor, who won his first Oscar this year for his portrayal of the British physicist Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", turns in another astounding performance as the gender-conflicted Danish landscape painter Einar Wegener.
The film comes at a time when movies and television series about transsexuals are all the rage. This one is not sensationalist, but when you consider what Redmayne has achieved by the end of almost two hours of running time, you realize he has made something extraordinary seem inevitable and acceptable.
Born male in 1882, Wegener was one of the first people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, in 1930 in Dresden.
Although married to the portraitist Gerda Gottlieb, Wegener since childhood had experienced feelings that she was a woman trapped inside a man's body.
An artists' ball in Copenhagen, where Gerda suggests that her shy and delicate husband dress up as a woman, brings out the latent female tendencies. She also gets Wegener to pose as a woman for art-deco style portraits that help make her reputation.
So the question that will arise — if only jokingly — with the premiere of the transgender movie "The Danish Girl" on Saturday at the Venice Film Festival is should Oscar-winner Eddie Redmayne win another for best actor or best actress?
The British actor, who won his first Oscar this year for his portrayal of the British physicist Stephen Hawking in "The Theory of Everything", turns in another astounding performance as the gender-conflicted Danish landscape painter Einar Wegener.
The film comes at a time when movies and television series about transsexuals are all the rage. This one is not sensationalist, but when you consider what Redmayne has achieved by the end of almost two hours of running time, you realize he has made something extraordinary seem inevitable and acceptable.
Born male in 1882, Wegener was one of the first people to undergo sex-reassignment surgery, in 1930 in Dresden.
Although married to the portraitist Gerda Gottlieb, Wegener since childhood had experienced feelings that she was a woman trapped inside a man's body.
An artists' ball in Copenhagen, where Gerda suggests that her shy and delicate husband dress up as a woman, brings out the latent female tendencies. She also gets Wegener to pose as a woman for art-deco style portraits that help make her reputation.
