Extravagant and idiosyncratic may be the proper words to describe Sally Potter’s Orlando, an ambitious screen adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel.
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co-productions often tend be compromising- a result of using actors with varied accents, different styles. But Potter’s film is a rare European co-production, a unified work that bears the signature of its maker.
Written in 1928, Orlando was apparently inspired by Virginia Woolf’s friendship with the aristocratic Vita Sackville-West. Written after Woolf’s great book To the Lighthouse, the novel revolves around an intriguing character that has lived for 400 years and has changes sex in the course of time.
Potter’s adaptation is loose and inventive, maintaining the spirit of Woolf’s novel, though deviating from it in bringing the story up to the present. It is by no means a slavishly made literary film, like the early, dull movies of James Ivory and Ismail Merchant.
Playing at many film festivals (I saw it in Toronto, last September), Orlando has already acquired the label of an international art-house fare. However, Potter’s politics and film’s feminist agenda in no way interfere with enjoying this visually stunning film.
Orlando addresses itself to the issue of changing sexual identities through the eyes of Orlando, an ageless character (played by Tilda Swinton), over the course of four centuries. A witty exploration of sex and gender roles, the tale progresses from the court society of the Elizabethan era, through the intrigues of a central Asian ruler’s domain, into and through Victorian London, and onto the present.
Her first reaction when she becomes a woman is “no difference at all–just a difference sex.” Soon, however, she realizes that, under English law, as a woman, she is no longer entitled to her rank and estate. She is also not taken seriously by the prominent figures of her day.
The Victorian chapter in the film is particularly strong as it chronicles a time of wildness for men, but repression for women. Indeed, Orlando ends up sacrificing everything, both love and inheritance. Finally, she emerges in present-time London as an ordinary woman, who ironically in losing everything has gained herself–a truly liberated identity.
Tilda Swinton, who’s best known for work in Derek Jarman’s movies (Edward II, last year), is always riveting to watch. As an actress, she is blessed with statuesque screen presence and unconventional beauty. Swinton is offhandedly comic and engagingly attractive as both Orlando the man and the woman, though she is more convincing as a woman.
Quentin Crisp, author of the scandalously autobiographical novel The Naked Civil Servant who established notoriety in his stage show in New York in the late l970s, also gives a most credible performance as Queen Elizabeth I. Never for a second will you doubt that the role is played by a man.
The aesthetic sensibility shown in Orlando is remarkable in art design, sets, and costumes. Potter shot some of the film in Russia’s St. Petersburg, which stands in for medieval London in the winter, and in Uzbekistan, as the Middle Eastern country where Orlando spends a decade as British ambassador at the court of the Khan (Lothaire Bluteau). Using some of Peter Greenway’s previous collaborators (production designers Ben van Os and Jan Roelfs, and costume designer Sandy Powell), explains why the picture’s look bears resemblance to Greenway’s movies, specifically the elegant Draughman’s Contract.
But ultimately, Orlando is Potter’s movie–and success. I had met Potter in the 1980s in Boston, where I saw three of her four films, including The Gold Rush with Julie Christie, in 1983, and London Story, two years later. But nothing she has done before indicates or prepares for the unique talents she brings to this movie.
In Orlando, Potter sets a tonality that is critical and pointed, but never academic or didactic (an inherent danger in such films). As writer-director, she provides a stimulating exploration of a topical subject–Virginia Woolf should, of course, get credit for writing 65 years ago a novel that has become even more relevant with the passage of time.
Cast
Tilda Swinton as Orlando
Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I
Jimmy Somerville as Falsetto / Angel
John Wood as Archduke Harry
John Bott as Orlando’s Father
Elaine Banham as Orlando’s Mother
Anna Farnworth as Clorinda
Sara Mair-Thomas as Favilla
Anna Healy as Euphrosyne
Dudley Sutton as James I
Simon Russell Beale as Earl of Moray
Matthew Sim as Lord Francis Vere
Charlotte Valandrey as Princess Sasha
Toby Stephens as Othello
Oleg Pogudin (credited as Oleg Pogodin) as Desdemona
Heathcote Williams as Nick Greene / The Publisher
Lothaire Bluteau as The Khan
Thom Hoffman as William III
Sarah Crowden as Mary II
Billy Zane as Shelmerdine
Ned Sherrin as Addison
Kathryn Hunter as Countess
Roger Hammond as Swift
Peter Eyre as Pope
Toby Jones as Second Valet
Credits:
Directed by Sally Potter
Screenplay by Potter, based on Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf
Produced by Christopher Sheppard
Cinematography Aleksei Rodionov
Edited by Hervé Schneid
Music by David Motion, Sally Potter
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release dates: Sept 1992 (Venice) March 12, 1993 (UK)
Running time: 93 minutes
Budget $4 million
Box office $13 million
