"Orlando"
                          A Film Review
                               by
                      Linda Lopez McAlister

   Sometimes (especially if you live in a city far from the
country's film meccas, New York and LA) you can't wait for a film
to come to you, you have to go to the film.  Last week after the Berks
I popped into New York for the express purpose of seeing Sally Potter's
"Orlando" now instead of waiting until October when it's scheduled
to come to Tampa.   And I'm so glad I did, for I can now spend the
intervening months savoring the memory and looking forward to
seeing it again in the Fall.

   Sometimes feminist filmmakers whose 1970s films are staples of
feminist film studies classes get a chance to make big feature
films and their feminism seems to evaporate before your eyes.
Sally Potter is NOT such a filmmaker.  From her most well-known
feminist experimental film, "Thriller" (1979), through her first
feature "Golddiggers" with Julie Christie, to "Orlando," the
hallmark of her work is her dazzling creative intelligence and
originality working with uncompromisingly feminist themes.

    Like the Virginia Woolf novel on which it is based "Orlando" is
the all time great gender bending tale.  Everyone knows that Woolf
wrote the book as a kind of love offering to Vita Sackville-West,
no mean gender bender in life herself, and that Orlando and his
family estate, the gift of Queen Elizabeth I (played to subtle
comic perfection by Quentin Crisp) ARE Vita Sackville-West
and Knole, her beloved family estate in Kent.  When the Queen gives
the bequest, she makes one request of the handsome if (as was
the custom of the time) somewhat effeminate young courtier, Orlando--
he must never grow old.  And he doesn't, though the centuries bring
other changes most notably the change from being a "he" to a "she"
somewhere along about the 18th Century when he finds he cannot do
the warlike things males are required to do.  Orlando announces
this change in a full frontal nude shot in a mirror and an aside to
the audience: "Same person, no difference at all.  Just a different
sex."  Yeah, sure.  But that's not the only gender bending in the film;
you find it everywhere, for example the soprano voice on the
soundtrack that's revealed to be a counter tenor, Crisp cast as the
other kind of queen, Orlando's androgynous 20th Century child and more.

   I think that Potter has done a perfectly wonderful job of
bringing Woolf's novel to the screen.  Aside from one or two minor
points that are unclear unless you're familiar with the book, it's
practically perfect.  Among the perfections is Tilda Swinton's
performance as Orlando.  It takes a special kind of an actor to
carry off this multiply gendered and socialized role and she does
it wonderfully.  The camera caresses Orlando's handsome boyishness and
womanliness in turn.  I loved, too, the skill with which Potter and
her production designers evoked the spirit of the different
centuries Orlando passes through, from the 18th C.'s elaborate
foppishness and orientalism to the 19th C. evocation of Bronte
novels and romantic heros on the moors, where, it turns out to no
one's surprise that what sex one is makes a great deal of
difference (and Orlando loses her beloved estate for want of a
penis or a male heir).

   For me, almost the best thing about the film is the concluding
sequence in which Potter departs from the letter of Woolf's novel,
but certainly not from the spirit, by bringing Orlando right up to
the 1990s instead of ending in 1928 as the novel did.  Of course it
really had to be done that way since throughout the film Orlando,
from whatever century s/he's in, carries on a running conversation
with her 1990s audience everytime she looks directly into the
camera and makes a comment or flashes us a knowing look or a raised
eyebrow.  It stands to reason that eventually she's going to meet
up with us and she does (right in the same spot where we first met in
1600) but now she's a strong, confident woman who strides through London
in jhodpurs and boots and rides a motorcycle, looking forward to
the future and that of her daughter who's alreadly learning to
construct her own world through the lens of a video camera.

    However long you have to wait or wherever you have to travel to
see "Orlando," I'd say don't miss it.  Meanwhile, while you're
waiting, you may want to pick up the book if you haven't read it
recently.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this is Linda Lopez on Women and Film.