Orlando

ORLANDO   ****

Sally Potter

1993

IDEA:  Instructed by a dying Elizabeth I to never grow old, a nobleman lives for centuries, first as a man and then as a woman, dealing with England's shifting customs and geopolitics.

BLURB:  In a film brimming with the most exquisite sets and costumes (can Sandy Powell do any wrong?), the most sublime effect of Orlando might be Tilda Swinton herself. Her porcelain facial features and fulsome eyes seem to be magically lit from within; whether she’s looking directly at us or not, her visage envelops the frame like some numinous icon we cannot help but be ensorcelled by. Suffice it to say, there could be no better actor to embody an ethereal, gender-fluid immortal who defies time, space, biology, and social order, who tries on human culture as if it were a series of costume changes with nary a perfect fit. Just as nobody can fix Tilda Swinton into any mold, nor can one fix Orlando, whose protean, centuries-spanning process of becoming throws into relief the absurdities and contradictions of the rigid roles foisted upon her by society. As a man, Orlando is expected to be aggressive and commanding, and even he, though ill-suited to these traits, unthinkingly indulges in the privileges of machismo when he claims a woman as his simply because he adores her. Orlando remains the same person as a woman, but is now suddenly forced into immobilizing, elephantine gowns, lectured by pompous men, and stripped of her property rights. Potter’s film exposes gender as a performance constructed differently and arbitrarily across eras and cultures, and the sexed body not as an essentialized form but a surface onto which social mores are attached and reified. This is all conveyed with incredible wit, gemlike editing, a swoon-worthy score, and not a wasted frame. Potter’s storytelling economy is as breathtaking as Orlando’s mad dash through the hedge maze, her pristine sense for color and camera movement as gratifying as a queer hero who lives an eternity, taking all the time they need to define their own freedom.