|
|
Article: Spirits either sex assume. (interview with film director Sally Potter) (Interview)
- Article from:
- Artforum International
- Article date:
- June 22, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Artforum International Magazine, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
Sally Potter's Orlando has a certain miraculous quality in that it makes a much-loved, phantasmagoric work of 20th-century fiction plausible in film terms while sticking to the book's fantastic premise. Potter follows her hero/ine through the centuries, but Orlando remains unmarked by passing time except in the getting of wisdom--which involves, in this case, a change of sex. The film can be read, like the book, as a mediation on gender relations, inheritance, historical consciousness, and sexual identity, yet it's pure fun, whimsical enough to feature Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth I and Tilda Swinton's Orlando roaring into the 20th century on a motorbike.
Various ...