Feature: Movie "The Danish Girl" makes audience fall in love at Venice Int'l Film Festival

"The Danish Girl," which was screened at the Venice International Film Festival, is a highly unusual love story, and critics and viewers are raving about the movie.

"It definitely deserves an award. Everything about the film is very high-class," an American film critic, Alex Deleon, told Xinhua on Sunday just after watching the film at the festival.

"The scenography is like a painting and the recitation is excellent," Deleon said. But what especially makes the film so fantastic is "the celebration of pure love between two persons, a true love that goes beyond everything, even gender, a love that wins against all," he said.

Deleon was just one of several film critics who showed enthusiasm for "The Danish Girl," a film by 2011 best director Oscar winner Tom Hooper, presented this week among those competing for the Golden Lion in the Venezia 72 section.

The film is inspired by the real life of Danish painter Einar Wegener, who underwent a series of pioneer operations in the early 1930s to become Lili Elbe, and his wife Gerda Wegener, respectively portrayed by 2015 best actor Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander.

Set in Copenhagen in 1926, Einar is married to Gerda and is revered for his landscape paintings. Gerda is also an artist, less renowned but steadily working as a portraitist of prominent citizens.

Theirs is a strong and loving marriage. That all begins to change one day when, on deadline for a portrait, Gerda asks her husband to fill in for a model by putting on a dress so that she can finish the painting.

Einar soon realizes that being Lili is an expression of his truest self and begins living his life as a woman. Gerda unexpectedly finds that she has a new muse, and renewed creative ferment.

The couple meets with society's disapproval, yet their love grows as Gerda finds the courage to help her husband become the woman that he really is at heart.

"The Danish Girl" is based on the book by the same name by American author David Ebershoff. There is also a book, "Man into Woman," which is Einar's autobiography and based on his diary.

Speaking at the film's press conference, Hooper said "The Danish Girl" is "about inclusion made possible by love."

"And the extraordinary thing about the love story that Lili and Gerda share is that it is unconditional, compassionate, sincere love that makes possible change, makes possible acceptance. Yes, it is a film about inclusion, but the key to inclusion is love," he said.

Several female viewers told Xinhua they were impressed by Gerda's character. Giovanna Calabro, an Italian university professor of Spanish culture, admitted that she was feeling a little confused while watching the film at the beginning.

"But then I was captured by the strength of a love that goes beyond everything, to the point that at the end any difference between man and woman seemed to have disappeared and what I saw were just two persons, two persons deeply in love with each other," Calabro said.

"I thought of what I would do if he (Einar) was my husband, and I hoped I would have the capacity to behave the same. I think it is incredible, you really have to have so much love for a person and always be putting love first," said a young filmmaker from the United States, Au Kayee.

"She was always sacrificing for him, always looking after him, always caring for him, although it was hurting her. It is so beautiful. This is a rare kind of love, a story of love and a story about putting the other first," she said. Endi