Orlando

I got the book, by Virginia Woolf, from the shop a while back, and I got the film using my subscription to LoveFilm.



Although the film is beautiful to look at, it seems to be unable to express what it's about. There's no real plot, as such. Orlando falls in love twice, once as a feckless nobleman to a Russian diplomat's daughter, and then again as a Victorian woman to an American man. The film doesn't seem to be a romance, though. Tilda Swinton acts well enough, but doesn't quite persuade as a man, although she was perfect to play the Archangel Gabriel in Constantine a few years later.



I suppose it's one of these films you see just to say you've seen it, but I think it's worth taking into account the context of the story. It was written in the late 1920's. Women had only recently been enfranchised and just the idea of someone who can live forever and change sex at will must have seemed incredible and exotic.