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Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780767827690
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 0767827694
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 1
Release Date: August 03, 1999
Running Time: 93 minutes
Sales Rank: 32761
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: June 09, 1993
Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Breathtaking and practically nondiscursive, Sally Potter's audacious Orlando overcomes some dodgy performances and a narrative structure that could most generously be described as 'loose' to emerge as a haunting, discussion-provoking trans-historical and transsexual drama. Commanded never to age by Queen Elizabeth (played with surprisingly little camp by legendary cross-dresser Quentin Crisp), the title character becomes immortal; we then follow Orlando through 400 years of dreamlike British history. Midway through the film, Orlando changes genders--to Potter's immense credit, the transformation is handled with little fanfare and no explanation. Tilda Swinton, in the lead role, is far more convincing as a woman than as a man, and even during the film's latter half, her impassivity and lack of expression can be annoying. Potter encourages Swinton to play to the camera, and the resulting asides and glances askance can be amusing, but often seem purposeless, or even arch. Nevertheless, the willful idiosyncrasy and understatement of the film never quite capsize the project, and once you give yourself over to the filmmaker's logic, the panoramic sweep of the cinematography (remarkable sets include an aristocratic skating party on the frozen Thames during the Great London Frost of 1603, a stunning tent-caravan in Central Asia, and countless fastidious boudoirs and interiors) will surely keep you enraptured. Orlando is no Merchant-Ivory production, no prissy, forgettable period piece; this film has teeth, and it may bite ferociously when you least expect it to. Based on, but scarcely resembling, the Virginia Woolf modernist classic of the same name. --Miles Bethany
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - "The very fabric of life was magic."
In her most playful and exuberant novel, Virginia Woolf writes the "historical biography" of Orlando, a young boy of nobility during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A wild ride through four centuries, the novel shows Orlando aging, magically, only thirty-six years between 1588 and 1928. Even more magically, he also changes from a man to a woman. As she explores Orlando's life, Woolf also explores the differing roles of men and women in society during various periods, ultimately concluding that one's ... Read More
Rating: - Gender
This film, while very strange and yet good, shows gender dichotomies in a very creative and fresh way. It is an art film.
Rating: - Orlando
I thoroughly enjoyed this film. A wonderful philosophical journey through a life filled with discovery.
Rating: - Amazing...
I've watched this movie a few times now, and now it's on my shelf...
Visually stunning, poetic, erotic, mesmerasing movie...
Rating:  - A Thinking Person's Fantasy
Director Sally Potter's fondly embraceable, slightly over-elaborate big screen version of Virginia Woolf's famously psychedelic tale is a moving study in the power of understatement, and a testimony to how even the most justified taking of print-to-screen liberties may sometimes come back to nip its creator. In giving the androgynous-looking Tilda Swinton (probably best known to US audiences as the White Witch in the recent Narnia adaptation) the starring role as a striking young Elizabethan lad who ... Read More
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