Tilda Swinton's lamb-to-lion transformation in I Am Love made me want to see (or re-see) more of her work, so yesterday's movie was a press screening of Orlando.
I missed Sally Potter's adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel when it came out in 1992 and haven't seen it since, though I kept meaning to, so I can't say whether the digital work recently done to the film changed it in any way or if it just restored it to its original state. I can attest, though, that Orlando is a beautifully shot, imaginatively constructed, occasionally absurd but more often tartly funny reverie on the limits of human existence and the possibility of transcendence. In part by translating some of Woolf's pointed commentary into asides that Orlando directs to the camera (not that he always gets the joke, since he's often the butt of it), the movie preserves the book's satiric stake on stupid human tricks like colonialism, classism, and the glorification of war. And, first, last, and always, it takes on gender stereotyping. That's done in countless small but tasty ways, like when Queen Elizabeth is played by a wink-free, regal Quentin Crisp. It also accounts for Orlando's second magical transformation, which is one of the story's main hooks. Read the rest on The House Next Door, Slant Magazine's blog.
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