So Charlize Theron won an Oscar for changing her appearance and playing a lesbian (not to mention a serial killer) in Monster. And Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for changing her appearance and playing a woman with lesbian leanings in The Hours.

And what do you get when you put those in a weird, Oscar-heavy blender? The Danish Girl, in which Kidman and Theron will play a pair of Danish artists who come to national attention when the husband Elnar (Kidman) gets the world's first sex change operation, in 1931. The Hollywood Reporter says the movie will be based on David Ebershoff's best-selling novel, which was a fictionalized account of the true story.

Talk about stranger than fiction. Anand Tucker, who has made both emotionally wrought films like Hilary and Jackie as well as trifles like Shopgirl, will direct the story, which is guaranteed to be one of the stranger things we'll see in whatever year this comes. The whole story starts when Greta (Theron), a painter, convinces her husband Einar to stand in for a female model she wanted to paint. The painting was a hit, so Greta talked her husband into dressing like a woman more often. Eventually that led to the world's first sex change operation, and a heck of a lot of media attention after that.

I could complain about the casting of two ethereally gorgeous women to play what must have been a strange couple, and how they'll probably engage in the same "uglying-up" gimmicks that won them Oscars in the past. But I'm mostly glad that this fascinating story has secured the big-name stars to make sure the movie gets made. Men can fantasize over this pairing all they want, but I have a feeling that this will be way, way more than faux-lesbian titillation.