REVIEW | Gender Division: Looking Back at Sally Potter's "Orlando"
by Eric Kohn (Updated 12 hours, 22 minutes ago)
http://www.indiewire.com/article/2010/07/19/review_gender_division_looking_back_at_sally_potters_orlando/Eighteen years after its initial theatrical release, "Orlando" returns to theaters with all of its original allure intact, and then some. Sally Potter's uniquely strange adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel has grown in stature, mainly due to the global stardom of its versatile lead, Tilda Swinton. Potter boldly rejects the prospects of trying to make Swinton seem conventionally masculine, letting the performance transcend gender categories to become a keen meditation on identity.
As the titular poet with the inexplicable ability to live 400 years (first as a man, then a woman) Swinton capitalizes on an androgynous appearance that continues to play a role (albeit to subtler degrees) in her latest work. With her recent performances like "Burn After Reading" and "I Am Love," Swinton is assertively ladylike in a man's world. But "Michael Clayton" allowed her to play an icy villain with virtually no overt feminine qualities. Now, Swinton's self-evident talent has become a kind of elegant fixation for the moviegoing public. "One thing everyone realizes about Swinton [is] she can 'look' like so many things," observes an enthusiastic commenter on a Swinton clip posted to YouTube. "As a result, she is destined to play as many different types of roles as possible—if fate permits it."
