As the
movie opens, the married artists Einar and Gerda Wegener are working out of
their apartment in Copenhagen. The year is around 1908 and they have been married
for just a few years. They do not have children as yet, but they have hopes
that they would soon.
Einar
is a painter of Scandinavian landscapes and Gerda is a figurative painter. When
the model for a painting Gerda is working on fails to appear one day, she asks
Einar to take the model’s place. Einar would need to pose with the model’s
dress and assume a feminine posture. In posing as a woman, Einar's simmering desire to become a woman comes to a boil.
At
first Gerda finds Einar’s interest in posing as a woman an interesting
diversion and as a means to have some fun at various social events. But, Einar becomes more and more serious about his interest in transitioning to a
woman in more than just wardrobe and affect. As an early step in that
direction, he takes on the name Lili Elbe and the pronoun "she." She gives up
painting and becomes Gerda’s primary model. Gerda’s
paintings become highly sought after with her new model.
Lili’s quest to become a woman intensified
over the subsequent years and extended to hoping to acquire a uterus so
that she could give birth. With Gerda’s help, Lili eventually finds a surgeon
in Germany who is willing to perform a series of risky procedures that will
make her into a woman. After the operations, Lili was
transformed into the woman she wanted to be, but without the availability of
anti-rejection drugs and antibiotics, she died in the hospital with Gerda at
her side.
