Orlando

Orlando directed by Sally Potter, cast: Tilda Swinton, Lothaire Bluteau — France, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Russia, Italy — 1992 — 93 min.

A visually dazzling adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel, which tells the story of a young aristocrat who traverses several centuries of history, experiencing life as both a man and a woman.

The English aristocrat, poet and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, receives an unusual order from the monarchine: never grow old. Thus begins Orlando's (Tilda Swinton) four-century journey through courtly intrigue, diplomatic expeditions, literary salons and wars—a journey in which the protagonist wakes up one morning as a woman without asking why, and lives on, loved and betrayed, fighting for the right to her own property in a world that denies women it.

Sally Potter, a director with a background in British experimental cinema, has made an adaptation that has been considered unscreenable for decades — keeping an ironic distance from Woolf's prose thanks to the protagonist's distinctive, direct looks into the camera. Alexei Rodionov's painterly photographs, the splendour of Sandy Powell's costumes (her first Oscar nomination) and music co-created by Potter herself build a world where form is as important as content: costume, architecture and light become the language of the story, not just its background.