Orlando (Potter, 1992): Rio Cinema, 6.30pm
This is a 35mm presentation. There will be a Q&A with writer, director and Rio Cinema patron Sally Potter herself, to be hosted by curator and author of many books including The Cinema of Sally Potter, So Mayer.
Time Out review:
Virginia Woolf's 1928 modernist novel, but the joy is that the film
comes over simply: a beautiful historical pageant of 400 years of
English history, full of visual and aural pleasures, sly jokes,
thought-provoking insights, emotional truths - and romance. It begins at
the opulent court of Virgin Queen Elizabeth (Quentin Crisp), where the male
immortal Orlando receives favour and an estate; and thence follows his
quest for love in 50-year jumps through the Civil War, the early
colonial period, the effete literary salons of 1750 (by which time
Orlando is a woman), the Victorian era of property, and finally a 20th
century postscript added by Sallly Potter. The fine, stylised performances from
an idiosyncratic international cast are admirably headed by Swinton's
magnificent Orlando, who acts as the film's complicitous eyes and ears;
and there's little to fault in Alexei Rodionov's cinematography, which
renders the scenes with rare sensitivity. It's a critical work - in the
sense that it comments wryly on such things as representations of
English history, sexuality/androgyny and class - but made in the spirit
of a love poem to both Woolf and the England that made us.
Wally Hammond
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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