Orlando Reviews

Since this movie has a solid reputation, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, I have to admit that I always had a hard time to connect with Sally Potter's work (and, by now, I have already seen half of the movies she has directed) and I'm afraid even her most heralded movie turned out to be quite challenging. At least, there is no doubt that Orlando was quite a fascinating character. Still, even if Tilda Swinton certainly delivered a strong performance here, I wonder if she was really the right choice to play this character. Indeed, in my opinion, an even more androgenous actor/actress might have worked better. Concerning the rest of the movie, well, beside the fact that the main character was apparently immortal and changed gender half-way through, the damned thing was pretty weird which wasn't a problem but it was also terribly random. Seriously, one of the segments involving some (random) Russian characters took place almost completely on ice but why?!? Another issue was that, even you spent the whole duration only focusing on this character, you actually never get to learn Orlando at all. Basically, he/she was treated as some kind of dreamlike being which was intriguing but he/she always remained at arm's length which turned out to be rather frustrating. For example, Orlando was first a man and then a woman but, while the character argued that it didn't make any difference, it actually did and, from the moment Orlando became a woman, she started t experience the same discrimination that most women have to face during their life. Unfortunately, that's something that wasn't developed at all, in fact, they kept moving from one random scene to another random scene instead of going deeper into any theme or idea displayed in this movie. Anyway, to conclude, even if the whole thing didn't completely work for me, it was still a really intriguing tale and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

Orlando is fucking terrible. It's not that I'm not open to the bending of convention or a bona fide mind-fuck movie. I adore those styles. Brazil, Shutter Island and Fight Club are examples of good mind-fuck movies. A recent Coen Brother's pic called A Serious Man is a great example of a brilliant movie which did not offer any closure at all (it literally ends in mid-scene). To bring something like this to the screen, a filmmaker needs something resembling an artistic soul - or at least a bit of filmmaking skill. Orlando's writer-director Sally Potter has neither.

To be blunt, Orlando feels like a Year 8 Media Studies project created by someone who wanted to be self-consciously smart and claim they've made something "challenging". There's a distinct difference between challenging cinema, and cinema that will just plain piss people off. There's a difference between being genuinely clever and being a self-consciously clever, pretentious git. Sally Potter, you fabulous idiot.

With the film constantly keeping us at arm's length, it's impossible to get engaged in anything that happens. Minus a solid emotional core, any characters to latch onto and so much as a modicum of humour, Orlando is 90 minutes of irritating nothingness which proceeds without logic or coherency.

I can only sum up my thoughts with one visual image: