Director: Sally Potter
Running Time: 92 mins
Certificate: PG
Release Date: August 6th 2012
If you like films to be literal and make logical sense, then Orlando is not the movie for you. However if you enjoy something idiosyncratic that stands alone as a unique bit of independent cinema, and which certainly make you think, Sally Potter’s 1992 movie is well worth a look.
Based on Virginia Woolf’s classic novel, the film follows young nobleman Orlando (Tilda Swinton), who is ordered by Queen Elizabeth I to stay young forever. Miraculously he does, with the film charting Orlando’s life over four centuries. Over time he courts a young Russian woman, becomes patron to a poet, and then heads for Constantinople to represent the Crown. Once there another miraculous things happens (well, miraculous to us, but seemingly not to Orlando), as he changes from a man to a woman. While she retains the same mind and personality, she finds the world is rather different for a lady, not least that she can’t own property as a woman. [Read more…]