Orlando
Based on Virginia Woolf’s 1928 classic Orlando: A Biography, filmmaker Sally Potter’s sumptuous fantasy stars a sublime Tilda Swinton as the eponymous seventeenth-century nobleman who, commanded by Queen Elizabeth I (played by legendary raconteur Quentin Crisp) to never age, voyages through four hundred years of English history, first as a man, then as a woman.
The spectacular sets, breathtaking costumes (by the genius Sandy Powell), and Swinton’s androgynous performance style give captivating expression to Woolf’s text, a playful, ahead-of-its-time exploration of gender roles and fluidity that remains as fresh and surprising today as it was in the 1920s.