1992 Directed by Sally Potter
In 1600, nobleman Orlando inherits his parents' house, thanks to Queen Elizabeth I, who commands the young man to never change. After a disastrous affair with Russian princess Sasha, Orlando looks for solace in the arts before being appointed ambassador to Constantinople in 1700, where war is raging. One morning, Orlando is shocked to wake up as a woman and returns home, struggling as a female to retain her property as the centuries roll by.
Tilda Swinton Billy Zane Lothaire Bluteau John Wood Charlotte Valandrey Quentin Crisp Heathcote Williams Dudley Sutton Peter Eyre Kathryn Hunter Ned Sherrin Jimmy Somerville Roger Hammond Simon Russell Beale John Bott Elaine Banham Anna Farnworth Sara Mair-Thomas Jerome Willis Anna Healy Viktor Stepanov Mary MacLeod Barbara Hicks Alexander Medvedev Toby Stephens Oleg Pogodin Thom Hoffman Matthew Sim George Yiasoumi Show All…
The British, they just don't seem to make films like this anymore. These manicured, composed, intricate films used to be the backbone of the British film industry (Peter Greenaway, anyone?) and now they are sorely missed, by me anyway.
I love the esoteric quality of Potter's adaptation. I love its symmetry. I love its archness.
Observe:
Shelmerdine: You are hurt, ma'am?
Orlando: I am dead, sir.
Shelmerdine: Dead? That is serious, can I help?
Orlando: Will you marry me?
Shelmerdine: Ma'am, I would gladly but I fear my ankle is twisted.
The cast is almost as beautiful as the mise-en-scéne: Tilda Swinton's black eyes are haunting and used to brilliant effect with the numerous, third wall breaking glances at the…
Sally Potter's high camp take on the Virginia Woolf novel is a tale of a gender-bending androgyne who lives for centuries; underneath the film's glossy artifice, though, there's a tragic core. It's like a slightly less gay Highlander, basically.
Tilda Swinton is superb, and whose incredible face looks like something you would normally find gazing out from an Elizabethan portrait. S/he carries the film, but it is also about the sumptuous costumes and art design, with any sense of precious artiness undercut by a Gilliamesque sense of irreverence and humour. Wonderful.
"If the comedy in that chapter was laced with an inner feminism, such undertones are brought to the surface after Orlando, suffering a crisis of masculinity after refusing to serve in a war, suddenly wakes up to find that he has turned into a woman. The shifting social roles are immediate and the gender binary is made abundantly clear with the character’s dress and perspective. Orlando goes from having power to being powerless, and upon returning home from a battle he never took part in, she’s learned that her unidentifiable gender has cost her the property that belonged to her when she was previously male. This unraveling of gendered hierarchies offers a parallel to transgender experiences and transgender cinema. The confusion, difficulty and humor in finding out what it means to be one gender or another is prominent in Orlando, making it an important picture towards an often-neglected area of filmmaking."
more here
moviemezzanine.com/tilda-swinton-essay/
Film #17 among my 52 Films by Women 2017
How did I not see this before? It stars Tilda Swinton in a gender bender, two aspects of cinema I almost always enjoy, plus it's based on a feminist classic, the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. How could I miss this? And why didn't anyone warn me that it would blow me away?
Swinton plays the title character, starting out in 1600 as a young nobleman under the reign of Elizabeth I, who is portrayed in exquisite drag by Quentin Crisp. In the film's first chapter, "Death," while serving as a page at the Elizabethan court, androgynously handsome Orlando becomes the favorite and "mascot" of the elderly Queen, who instructs him…
Queen Elizabeth tells Orlando, as long as he never withers, he will retain the Queen's estate. So, Orlando doesn't age. Orlando lives centuries dabbling in poetry and politics - then wakes up one morning as a woman and suddenly everything changes.
This film is a stream of conscious, dreamlike satire of sexism in England from Victorian times to present. As a man Orlando is allowed to dabble, he's allowed to be frivolous and chase women. As a woman Orlando is as good as dead without a man around. The film confronts you, the viewer, by breaking the 4th wall and looking at you - as if to ask you for your take on things. It wants you to take a…
I knew nothing about this, except for the fact that it was a period piece and Tilda was in it, so I was VERY surprised by what this ended up being. Really enjoyed it, with the highlight definitely being her performance.
There is, perhaps, not much to ORLANDO, but it's sumptuous in its presentation and makes a sort of virtue of its airiness, presenting the title character as so wealthy and privileged that he can take centuries to form into a complete person and initially take a change in sex as seemingly random as his/her immortality in stride, not seeing its importance until confronted in the most direct way possible.
It's am interesting take if one does not particularly require drama; it enables an amusingly foppish performance from Tilda Swinton, who gives Orlando an amusing vacuousness that no amounted of pointed glances at the camera can counter. She makes Orlando not a fool, but someone with the freedom to be a…
The thing that impressed me most about this film, beyond its sumptuous visuals, is the way it discusses and demonstrates the passing of time.
It's truly astounding to see the evolution of humanity through Orlando's eyes both as a man and a woman. Of course this is backed up by the film's afformentioned visuals.
Yeah, loved the time travel aspect of this. Absolutely loved it.
The female gaze is powerfully effective. I want to fuck Billy Zane more than ever.
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