I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Orlando (Tilda Swinton) is a feminine well-educated young man. It's 1600. The elderly Queen Elizabeth takes on Orlando as her mascot. She bestows on him land, money and a castle on one condition. Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old. He falls for Moscovite Ambassador's daughter Sasha Menchikova leaving his engagement to Lady Euphrosyne. Sasha leaves him and breaks his heart. He pays poet Greene who then ridicules his poetry. It's 1700. He is sent to Constantinople as British ambassador. He is changed into a woman. It's 1750. Lady Orlando loses her property since a woman has no ownership rights to the land. She rejects a proposal from Archduke Harry. It's 1850. She falls for Shelmerdine. The lawsuits are settled and she can only keep the land if she has a male heir. It's the modern era. She has a daughter and has written a book.Tilda Swinton has a gender bending role and has the androgynous presence to do it. She does an amazing job taking on this role. The movie should probably be a lot more surreal. It's stuck somewhere in the middle. There is a perfunctory nature to this film. She wakes up one morning and finds that herself a woman. It could be read as she was always a woman pretending to be a man. Some sort of transformation needs to be seen or Orlando needs some more declarative speech. Also spanning so much time leaves very little space for each section. The movie feels shallow hinting at a much deeper source material.

One of the best films I have ever seen! I followed a rather obscure reference to an indie film I'd never heard of, and found this fantastic movie. It captures the spirit and the magical realism of Virginia Woolf's novel. Every scene brings up the same question: is this ironic satire, or absurdist black comedy, or a tweaking of conventions, or just plain bizarre? And always the answer turns out to be the same: _all_ of the above ...and all at the same time too.Describing briefly what it's about by saying it's about a person who lives 400 years, half as a man and half as a woman, mostly misses the mark. Saying it's about the history of England, from both the vantage point of an inside participant and the vantage point of an outside observer, gets a little closer. I didn't find any discernible "narrative arc", but it doesn't feel like a collection of disconnected scenes either. It's one of the few more-or-less mainstream films where the label "postmodernist" seems accurate and even helpful.If you wait for the "meaning scene" (or even for a cogent explanation of much of anything) you'll just keep waiting. It's subtler than that. A constant subtext of ambiguous gender and sexuality runs through it, so much so that the role of the first Queen Elizabeth is acted by a famous drag queen, and the film is bracketed by the falsetto singing of a former member of the Bronski Beat, at the beginning as the queen's herald and at the end as a rather fake-looking angel.The photography, sets, music, and costumes are all out of this world. It's so detailed that Tilda Swinton wears a different color of contact lenses in each period. It would be an aesthetic experience even if you didn't understand a word of English. Nothing is exactly similar, but the first films that came to my mind are "Barry Lyndon", "Zelig", "A Single Man", "The Tree of Life", and the recent "Much Ado About Nothing".A couple decades old and never widely released, it's been remastered and is easier to find than ever in 2013.

Tilda Swinton as a man does require a certain denial. She is female lets not deny it. She is not the epitome of femininity but that is not a detraction from the person she portrays. She is plain but from start to finish she is not asexual far from it. She is rounded in her portrayal of Orlando except in the minor aspect of the deficiency in anger that is found in many men or to be more precise the denial of their expectations and acceptance of the reality with which they are met.However, his/her characters adaptability and acceptance of reality despite the negatives of choosing a such a crippled sex in that age is what defines her inherent female persona from start to finish.Quentin Crisp knowing his personal history is the epitome of queen and Billy Zanes acceptance of Orlando for the person that he/she is shows that his nature while that of a hero does not typify a gender pre-requisite stereotype.This is a beautifully rendered film with a delicate touch and attention to detail not just of England's mini ice age but of a richer tapestry that skates just above below the ice.When watching it you are scared to intrude as everything feels so fragile however the warmth, endurance and re-creation of Orlando as a life affirming force of nature is what makes this experience so robust. If anything it says that gender is not the issue but the the will of the individual to move forward in life despite the illusions and obstacles that society presents as the norm.If I have any negative comments on the movie is that it should have been longer and filled in the gaps that were obvious in the life of anyone who is over 400 years old as it fails to emphasize the tearing and pain that such inherent change entails.

Absolutely superb movie...just saw it right before writing this...remember having seen the clip on YT,and it gave me the feeling I should enjoy it :I definitively did ! As say others comments, mesmerizing, mysterious, delicate...and very profound even though quiet hidden at the beginning...It reveals this aspect, like all the movie, like a woman in love,slowly, enigmatically, words after words, with great sensitivity...And Tilda Swinton, wow ! what an actress !Plus she's beautiful ! I didn't see any movie with her before,but for sure gonna see some more...Not at all a usual Jimmy Somerville fan, I just love his part too ;and last song leaves you full of hope in our humanity.Music, cinematography, set design and costuming are absolutely exquisite and stunning.But unfortunately guess this exceptional movie is not for everyone's taste..In one sentence, Sally Potter made a movie that you won't forget !Her film eventually expresses what Orson Welles wrote with so much accuracy :"a film is never really good unless the camera is an eyes in the head of a poet"