Gender, Sex, Societal Roles Go Wild in Woolfe's 'Orlando'

Based on a novel by Virginia Woolf, "Orlando" has all the pieces needed for a movie destined to be an award winner, or at least a cult classic. There is cinematography that comes close to a quality novel's description, acting with extreme depth and dry, campy humor meant to shock as well as entertain.

Director and writer Sally Potter stretches the limits of the camera and the lead actress, Tilda Swinton, to make a movie enjoyable to people who like to laugh with joy as well as those who are just along for the visual ride.

The story is a trip through time by Orlando, exquisitely played by Swinton. Starting in 1600 with the subject Death, Orlando experiences 'Love,' 'Poetry,' 'Politics', 'Sex' and 'Birth' in front of our eyes. Orlando falls in love with a Muscovite, sees an early Shakespeare production, travels to the mysterious East, begins to write poetry and hobnobs with some of the more famous writers of the past.

Orlando is not without secrets, however. Although played by a woman, the character begins as a man accompanied by clever narration meant to create a suspension of disbelief. Though a glance is enough to see through this, as the story progresses it gets easier and easier to see Swinton as a man. Just when this happens, however, Orlando wakes up one morning to discover that he has become a woman. Addressing the audience, Orlando explains things by simply saying, "Just a different sex, nothing else changed."

These avant-grade exercises become the heart of the movie from the beginning when a firm introductory narration is broken by Orlando talking directly to the audience. Swinton creates an intimate connection with the audience by addressing the camera directly usually as part of a joke. By the end, all she has to do is make a quick flash with her oversized eyes to cause smirks and halting laughter.

To keep the audience from laughing at the whole movie, however, long closeups of Swinton's face are spliced into scenes with her punch lines. It soon comes to the point where the audience waits for Swinton's straight face so they know they can laugh along with her.

Swinton's asides work along with the rest of the movie to create a noticeable pattern. Each scene becomes similar to a second hand revolving around the face of a clock. They start slowly with the haunting soundtrack building wonder into the crisp imagery. Bright colors and dark backgrounds rule the screen until the characters steal the spotlight from them. But each scene, like the second hand returning to zero, ends with Swinton's friendly stare.

Director and writer Sally Potter makes quick and clean scene cuts into an art. An indecipherable pattern prepares the audience to be on their toes as well as to sit back with their own expectations. Especially well-done are the changes in time that can be as subtle as a run through a hedge maze or as blatant as the date and subject flashing across the screen.

Shades of black and white rule the screen and extravagant costumes line the halls. An especially well-done scene depicts the nobility dancing on a frozen lake with ice skates. The smooth movements of the cast live up to the costumes that are almost too elegant to be chronologically correct.

With all of the imagery and visual techniques in the movie, it is easy to be distracted and miss the peculiar role. Sally Potter gives sex in the movie. Only rarely can one ever be sure whether the character on screen is male or female. The lyrics to the mystical soundtrack are always soprano and a male singer is always, displayed. The ancient queen Orlando befriends, Elizabeth I, is played by a male actor. This makes a bedroom scene so hilarious that it is almost disturbing.

Orlando's experience with love and rejection return to haunt him after he changes into a woman and the law never seems to be happy with Lady Orlando owning property. The most intriguing aspect is that Orlando never has the "male" virtues while he is a man--he is out-drunk by the Eastern ruler and finds war nothing to his liking.

In the same sense, Orlando is never fully possessed of the "female" virtues while a woman; she is independent and the only lover she has tells her truthfully that she does not want a husband, but a lover. Orlando can only be happy, it seems, when in the modern world comfortably looking androgynous while riding a motorcycle with her daughter, played by Swinton's real-life daughter.

Orlando's adventures aren't those of a feminine man nor those of a masculine woman they are simply those of a person trying to be who she is, a being who in many ways transcends gender roles and sex itself. In this sense the modern day ending is an appropriate one, despite the obvious difference from what Woolf knew as modern. Potter implies that our era is the most free of all those lived in by Orlando but leaves us with no proof but that gained from the exquisite imagery and inherent Zaniness of the movie.

The gamble proves successful because as the film progresses, the colors in the scenes move away from black and white to vivid color and Orlando's questioning looks at the audience become less frequent as events make more sense to her. Orlando then stops being the oddball in her surroundings and comes to be a person not unlike the one sitting next to you in the theater.