Cheap Orlando (DVD) (Tilda Swinton) (Sally Potter) Price

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Customer Reviews of Orlando

"You're here as a casualty of love."
As a fan of Virginia Woolf novels, I anticipated "Orlando" with mixed feelings. We have all experienced the disappointment of seeing favourite novels translated to the screen, and yet, in spite of this, I couldn't help but be curious to see "Orlando" on film. I saw the film when it was released, and it remains one of my favourite novel-to-screen productions.

"Orlando" begins in the year 1600. Orlando is a young man--heir to a magnificent estate--when his anxious parents thrust him at an elderly Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth, a woman who always favoured handsome young men, embraces Orlando's beauty, and tells him "do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old." And from that moment on, Orlando never ages--but remains forever young.

Tilda Swinton was the perfect choice for the role of Orlando. There is something about the blank look to her features that lends itself perfectly to the role of Orlando--a Elizabethan male who eventually transforms into a twentieth century woman. I cannot imagine anyone else in this role. There were several pivotal moments in the film when Orlando/Swinton gazes directly at the camera. It is as though a secret, sympathetic exchange occurs between the viewer and the character of Orlando. In an interesting twist, Quentin Crisp plays Queen Elizabeth with a great deal of panache.

The film was true to the novel, and just as the novel was somewhat problematic in parts, so is the film. Orlando's romance with the American, Shelmerdine (Billy Zane) is perhaps the weakest part in the film. Visually, the film is stunning--the barges at night on the river--the sumptuous banquet scene--the dancing on a frozen river Thames--the magnificent maze. Woolf fans will enjoy "Orlando" for director Sally Potter obviously created the film with a great deal of respect for the author and her work--displacedhuman.

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Part man, part woman, all good
This is an amazing, ironic film, based upon Virginia Woolf's whimsically mock-serious epic about an immortal English lord, who experiences 400 years of history, changes his sex to that of a woman after refusing to participate in warfare (a feminist point that is subtly made), and never bores or condescends to us. What surprised me when I first saw it is how dry, boring and pompous it isn't; the film has a nice lightness and dry humor that make it digestible. The photography is beautiful and the film never drags, and the performances, which a lot of critics have suggested are somewhat two-dimensional, are that way for a reason: Orlando's adventure is too awesome to be rendered realistically; the people and adventures she experiences are meant, I think, to be represented symbolically---each character is actually a rough composite of perhaps hundreds of such types she meets in her journey from 1600 to 2000. Billy Zane, who is seen in the movie's poster, plays an American adventurer who romances the female Orlando, but to all of his "Titanic" fans, a word of caution: he's in the film for roughly twenty-five minutes, if that much. The real star of the show is the ethereally lovely, brilliant, and mysterious Tilda Swinton, whose male Orlando is unnervingly convincing; so much so that "he" almost seems to be doing a drag bit once the sex change happens---and because Swinton is so eye-pleasing and delightful, this is not a bad thing. Her intelligence and talent radiate from her face, which is so expressive that many shots consist simply of gigantic closeups of it---she can say more with a gaze than many lesser performers do with a page of dialogue. I first saw this film in 1993, as an exchange student living in London, and it gave me an appreciation for British history and for Woolf's books that I had never had before. It's really quite a smart, funny, cool, hip movie, but with no explosions, car chases, or hot-button themes, it's by no means a populist-type entertainment. If you like period films, or anything English, you'll dig this a lot: Orlando isn't just English, he/she *is* England, and the country should be so lucky as to be compared with Tilda Swinton's long-suffering (centuries of it, in fact, what a burden) poetry-spouting nobleman/woman. Very cool.

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One of my favorites.
Finally got this one on DVD after nearly wearing out my VHS copy. Sally Potter is one of the best directors and of course Tilda Swinton in the title role is mesmerizing in every way. Although a sharp departure from Virginia Woolf's source material, it retains the spirit and scope of the novel. Orlando's tranformation from man to woman half way through is a beautiful moment. Swinton proudly naked and observing herself in the mirror looks directly into the camera and says "no difference really, just a different sex" it brilliantly blurs the line between what it means to be a man and woman. And when I say blur, I mean it in a good way. The gender, sexual orientation and race lines all need to be blurred until they disappear. Orland is a good salvo in that war.