ORLANDO
Originally released in 1992, Orlando, was, to date, the most widely seen film that employed the talents of both Tilda Swinton and director Sally Potter. Potter who was recently featured in a retrospective series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City began her career making experimental shorts, expanding to features in 1983 with The Gold Diggers. All of Potters films up to that point challenged both technical and narrative conventions, most with particular interest in women roles, portrayals and perspectives.
Tilda Swinton was on parallel trajectory, although starting a bit later. A graduate student at Cambridge she wandered into film “acting” via Derek Jarman and Caravaggio. Swinton became part of Jarman’s “factory” of film artists that included costumer Sandy Powell, Isaac Julien and others. Until Olrando, she had only worked with Jarman, and didn’t even really consider herself as much an actress as a part of what she likes to call the production design.
Potter and Swinton sat down with Virginia Woolf’s novel and five years later finally made the film. The late great director Michael Powell (The Red Shoes) was a guiding support who they returned to again and again for advice. Raising money for a film about a 16 year old boy in the 16th century who time travels and changes gender is and was no easy feat. But it was done and the results are magnificent. This is a new, freshly remastered print, and since this is a period piece, with great attention to costume and period details, it looks wonderful.
But neither Sally Potter nor Virginia Woolf were meaning to celebrate or indulge in the romantic British past, as so many films do. It’s a film that is based on a very deliberate satire and critique of gender, politics, love, society, and divided up into sections accordingly. When we first meet Orlando (Swinton), he is young man who is looked upon favorably by the aging Queen Elizabeth (Quentin Crisp) and rewarded with land and titles. Unfortunately Orlando has a tendency to fall into deep sleep from which he cannot be aroused until 100 years later. He falls in love, accepts an ambassadorship but when he refuses to kill during wartime, he finds himself in the 19th century, and a woman about to be ejected from her home, stripped of her titles and means.
At a mere 92 minutes, it’s practically an action movie, quickly paced yet langorous and meditative. Swinton is, of course, exquisite as male and female, impossible to take ones eyes off of, impossible for Potter to take the camera away from. Unlike so many mainstream films that insist on explaining exactly what they mean, and therefore what you are supposed to think, Orlando, leaves almost too much room for interpretation, almost as much as Woolf’s novel does. Is it a feminist epic, a picaresque adventure, or period romance? It is all this and more, pure pleasure but with a necessary and provacative bite.
Orlando is now in theaters.
Written and directed by Sally Potter, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf; produced by Christopher Sheppard; Director of Photography, Alexei Rodionov; production design, Ben Van Os and Jan Roelfs; costume design, Sandy Powell; edited by Hervé Schneid; music by David Motion and Sally Potter.
With: Tilda Swinton (Orlando); Billy Zane (Shelmerdine); Lothaire Bluteau(The Khan); John Wood(Archduke Harry); Charlotte Valandrey (Sasha); Heathcote Williams (Nick Greene/Publisher) and Quentin Crisp (Queen Elizabeth I.)
