Orlando | 
| Director: Sally Potter
Actors: Tilda Swinton, Quentin Crisp, Jimmy Somerville, John Bott, Elaine Banham
Buy Used: $44.84
Rating:  48 reviews
Format: Pal
Language: German (Original Language)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: VHS Tape
EAN: 4019236001077
ASIN: B00004ROZU
Theatrical Release Date: June 9, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: IMPORTANT! Please READ Amazon description for REGION, Format and Language before purchasing. PAL FORMAT WILL NOT PLAY ON REGULAR US PLAYER. PLEASE DO NOT BUY if you don't have either multisystem or PAL player. Delivery time 2-3 weeks.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Breathtaking and practically nondiscursive, Sally Potter's audacious Orlando overcomes some dodgy performances and a narrative structure that could most generously be described as "loose" to emerge as a haunting, discussion-provoking trans-historical and transsexual drama. Commanded never to age by Queen Elizabeth (played with surprisingly little camp by legendary cross-dresser Quentin Crisp), the title character becomes immortal; we then follow Orlando through 400 years of dreamlike British history. Midway through the film, Orlando changes genders--to Potter's immense credit, the transformation is handled with little fanfare and no explanation. Tilda Swinton, in the lead role, is far more convincing as a woman than as a man, and even during the film's latter half, her impassivity and lack of expression can be annoying. Potter encourages Swinton to play to the camera, and the resulting asides and glances askance can be amusing, but often seem purposeless, or even arch. Nevertheless, the willful idiosyncrasy and understatement of the film never quite capsize the project, and once you give yourself over to the filmmaker's logic, the panoramic sweep of the cinematography (remarkable sets include an aristocratic skating party on the frozen Thames during the Great London Frost of 1603, a stunning tent-caravan in Central Asia, and countless fastidious boudoirs and interiors) will surely keep you enraptured. Orlando is no Merchant-Ivory production, no prissy, forgettable period piece; this film has teeth, and it may bite ferociously when you least expect it to. Based on, but scarcely resembling, the Virginia Woolf modernist classic of the same name. --Miles Bethany
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| Customer Reviews: Read 43 more reviews...
 Beautiful. Strange, but beautiful December 12, 2004
wiredweird (Earth, or somewhere nearby)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
The movie starts with Tilda Swinton playing Orlando, a male role (so far), and Quentin Crisp playing Queen Elizabeth. Already, physical sex and social gender have been neatly divided. Later on, Orlando abruptly transforms from man to woman with no reason or mechanism given. S/he takes it in stride, but her place in her social world changes around her. Given the magical premise, it's an effective way to comment on the attitudes of men and women towards each other, based on complete and mutual ignorance.
There was only one small problem with the casting. Swinton is just too lovely a woman to play even an androgynous male convincingly. It took some effort to go along with Tilda the man, but it was worth it for the sake of the plot.
And, if nothing else, I could always watch the incredible costuming and scenery. Architecture and landscaping seemed to have quiet lives of their own, tolerating the people that moved among them. Many scenes were chosen for strong, almost confrontational symmetries, something that definitely attracted my attention. Another scene near the end actually costumed the landscape, Christo-like, for reasons I never worked out. There were a number of night scenes, too, and many seemed to be filmed using natural light. Those scenes often had a grainy look, but not enough to be distracting.
This is an odd movie, but I like it. Swinton's little asides to the camera, sometimes just a glance, added a quirky note. It's a thoughtful movie, about tone and appearance rather than action, and delivers well in those areas. However much I like it, though, I come away a bit unsure what to make of it. Maybe that's why I keep coming back to it.
//wiredweird
 Blurring the line March 1, 2001
Michael M. Wilk (Howard Beach, NY)
13 out of 15 found this review helpful
First of all, I have to say that I have not read Virginia Woolf's book on which this film is based. Ms. Woolf is not an "easy read", as her style tends to ramble a bit, and from what I understand, one could not literally translate "Orlando" to the screen. I commend Sally Potter for her adaptation of Woolf's novel. "Orlando", to me, is about a person's journey of self-discovery. As the lead character says, "The same person-just a different sex." There is a wonderfully sly mixing-up and playing with gender here. Orlando, an effeminate male poet who later becomes a woman, is beautifully underplayed by Tilda Swinton. I admire her performance, as it is played with a very subtle wit. Queen Elizabeth I is portrayed by that grand unwilling champion of gay rights Quentin Crisp, and the beautiful Billy Zane is treated as the "love object" in two scenes of lush sensuality. "Bronsky Beat"'s Jimmy Somerville, with his famous falsetto voice is here too, as a singing angel at the film's finale. His song, "Coming", is wonderful, stating that gender doesn't really matter here-"I am coming, I am coming, here I am, neither a woman nor a man." The art direction is breathtakingly beautiful, and Sandy Powell's costumes are remarkably accurate, spanning the centuries from Elizabethan thru Jacobean thru Rococo thru Victorian to present-day. Some may find the pace of this gorgeous film a little ponderous, but I found it to be an intriguing 90 minutes. We are all humans, individuals-why all this fuss about what a "woman's" role in society is, or what a "man's" role in society is? Virginia Woolf, I understand, based "Orlando" on a meeting she had with an Italian noblewoman who bemoaned the fact that she was denied her inheritance due to the fact that she was born a woman. Almost unbelievable, isn't it?
Part man, part woman, all good February 5, 2001
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
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.
One of my favorites. March 13, 2003
Collin Kelley (Atlanta, Georgia United States)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
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.
Lingering Film -- Unusual Meditation on Sexuality November 27, 1998
bloombm@yahoo.com (Stamford, Connecticut)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have watched this film three times - yet each time I have watched it I have been intrigued by it - one of the rare films to explore the COMMON rather than the differences between men and women. There is a lushness and "an eternity" to the film - Ms. Potter did an excellent job from the site locations to the music. The landscapes varied from the bitter cold, to desert heat, to World War I, to foggy English countryside to modern day London - these enhanced the feeling that the essence of men and women are the same - not only now but in the past. I have a feeling that people will either love or hate this film. If you are looking for direct action this is not the film for you. However, if you are looking for a more dreamy, meditative film that is memorable than you should definitely check this one.
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