01
The Tango Lesson
Why this pick
Sally Potter again combines formal visual elegance with a self-questioning female perspective, using dance and shifting performance roles to explore authorship, desire, and identity.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1992 1h 33m GBR
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Orlando
DramaFantasy
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Orlando, try these.
01
02
The Last of England
Why this pick
A lyrical, fiercely stylised meditation on English history and identity, told through fragmented imagery rather than conventional plot—well suited to Orlando’s bold artifice.
03
Caravaggio
Why this pick
This deliberately anachronistic historical portrait shares Orlando’s pleasure in costumes, tableaux, queer desire, and a past made vivid through modern visual language.
04
The Favourite
Why this pick
For Orlando’s courtly games and coolly comic gender politics: an exquisitely designed period world where power, intimacy, and performance constantly unsettle one another.
05
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Why this pick
Its painterly period imagery and precise attention to looking, selfhood, and forbidden intimacy echo Orlando’s refined visual sensibility and gender-conscious romantic charge.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
The story begins in the Elizabethan era, shortly before the death of Queen Elizabeth I. On her deathbed, the Queen promises an androgynous young nobleman named Orlando a large tract of land and a castle built on it, along with a generous monetary gift; both Orlando and his heirs would keep the land and inheritance forever, but Elizabeth will bequeath it to him only if he assents to an unusual command: "Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old." Orlando acquiesces and reposes in splendid isolation in the castle for a couple of centuries, during which time he dabbles in poetry and art. His attempts to befriend a celebrated poet, however, backfire when the poet ridicules his verse. Orlando then travels to Constantinople as English ambassador to the Turks, and is almost killed in a diplomatic wikt:fracas. Waking up the next morning, he learns something startling: he has transformed into a woman.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Tilda Swinton
Orlando
Billy Zane
Shelmerdine
Lothaire Bluteau
The Khan
John Wood
Archduke Harry
Charlotte Valandrey
Princess Sasha
Heathcote Williams
Nick Greene/Publisher
Quentin Crisp
Elizabeth I
Peter Eyre
Mr Pope