Seen: Sunday, April 20, 2008
I was long overdue to see some Sally Potter films by the time Ebertfest rolled around back in late April, so in preparation for her 2004 film, Yes that was scheduled to screen at the festival, I picked up Orlando (1992), just to get a sense of her cinema before hand. Potter's style is so simple. Clean, bright sets, minimalist, but striking mise-en-scene, and compositionally it feels more like a modern painting. Even in the image shown above where Tilda Swinton's character is cloaked in ornate 18th century garb, there is a sense of separation from it. Mostly, perhaps, that is because Orlando (Swinton) often turns away from her own space and time to address us, speaking directly into the camera. It's sort of an acknowledgment of a primarily 20th century technology that didn't exist when her character would have. So there's an eternal life of her character that transcends time, which is, of course, the premise of the original novel "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf. Young, male Orlando decides not to age, but when he wakes one morning years later he is a woman. Swinton herself has a wryly androgynous look to her; she couldn't have been better cast. I found this film to be so curiously, almost coldly feminine, a feeling that repeats itself again in Yes, in particular. More on Potter to come...
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