Orlando (1992)

The other day I posted some sadsack shit to Bluesky about how I had no unique accomplishments to my name but that is not true because one time Sally Potter read a post I made about Orlando in a video promoting the film’s 4K restoration and agreed with it. I should adopt her pronunciation of my name, which is truly decadent.

Anyhow, as a former amateur Woolf studies jawn, I am endlessly delighted by Orlando, particularly with the way it adapts the novel’s means of breaking the fourth wall by, you guessed it, having Tilda Swinton give you the eyes. It feels less like the author taking the piss out of the biography as form and more like Swinton and Potter pausing for a moment to take in the sumptuousness of the moment, the bliss and decadence of life, especially of life as a woman.

Orlando blew my little brain wide open when I saw it as a freshman in college and continues to astonish in every aspect. The costumes. The music. The set design. The cast. The choice to extend the narrative beyond where Woolf ends her novel, in the early 1990s, where Orlando’s freedom is neither property nor marriage, but the company of her child, the wind through the trees, and the music of a literal angel in the air. The sheer number of candles on screen in a given moment. It’s hopeful, and maybe even a bit corny, but that’s also true of the novel, which Woolf wrote while caught in the grip of her love for another woman. Orlando is a movie made in the grip of love for its source material. One of my favorite movies.