OK, now this is totally hot, errr… ok, actually it isn’t. Remember “The Danish Girl”?
It’s a gender-bender that chronicles the story of a relationship between the first post-operative transsexual with Tomas Alfredson (“Let the Right One In”) directing. Wait, before the nerds get too excited about the filmmaker’s first post-vampire film, they better read the fine print quickly and don’t be surprised if half of them are running for the door before the sentence is over.
Charlize Theron was to star as the the wife to the world’s first male-to-female sex change patient (played by Nicole Kidman), but she dropped out of the drama earlier this fall.
Well, Kidman has her new mate now in Gwyneth Paltrow according to Deal Memo. The sex-changed drama is an adaptation of the David Ebershoff novel, and is based off a script written by Lucinda Coxon (“The Heart of Me,” and also a playwright).
Here’s some of the Amazon synopsis:
Though the title character of David Ebershoff’s debut novel is a transsexual, the book is less concerned with transgender issues than the mysterious and ineffable nature of love. Loosely based on the life of Danish painter Einar Wegener (Kidman’s role) who, in 1931, became the first man to undergo a sex-change operation, The Danish Girl borrows the bare bones of his story as a jumping-off point for an exploration of how Wegener’s decisions affected the people around him. Chief among these is his Californian wife, Greta (Paltrow’s role), also a painter, who unwittingly sets her husband’s feet on the path to transformation. While trying to finish a portrait of an opera singer who has cancelled a sitting, she asks Einar to stand in for her subject, putting on her dress, stockings, and shoes. The moment silk touches his skin, he is shaken. Greta soon recognizes her husband’s affinity for feminine attire, and encourages him not only to dress like a woman, but to take on a woman’s persona, as well. “Why don’t we call you Lili?” she suggests. What starts out as a harmless game soon evolves into something deeper, and potentially threatening to their marriage. Yet Greta’s love proves to be enduring if not immutable. As Einar inexorably transforms, he steps beyond “that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists” and Greta lets him go.
Felicity Huffman was busy. We’ll admit the idea of Nicole Kidman as a man isn’t appetizing to any one on staff, men or women and “Transamerica,” didn’t exactly light up our Netflix queue, but it still sounds like a pretty interesting experiment that you don’t see everyday, especially with this level of A-list stars. “Boys Don’t Cry” set in 1930s Denmark, maybe?