Orlando

When I was a teenager, I heard about a book, Orlando, written in 1928 by Virginia Woolf. All I knew about the story was that the main character switched between genders and, over their lifetime, fell in love with both women and men.That was enough to pique my curiosity.

I grew up on the outskirts of a small city in inland Portugal. I had no LGBTQIA+ reference points. These topics were not openly spoken about and it was only many years later that the internet would arrive to revolutionise the community, providing information, connection and social support.

The book did not answer my most secretly held questions. Orlando’s transformation occurs supernaturally and is told as just another event in a long life of tribulations. Even so, Orlando was an unforgettable character and the book, heavily annotated, still has pride of place in my collection.

When writing the novel, Virginia Woolf took inspiration from her lover, the writer Vita Sackville-West. Vita was from an aristocratic background and adored her family’s property, which had been a gift from Queen Elizabeth I, but she would never be able to inherit it due to being born a girl.

Many film industry professionals were of the opinion that adapting this novel for the screen would be an impossible, expensive and uninteresting task. But Sally Potter, leaning into the feminist subtleties of the narrative, captures Orlando’s enchanting nature and achieves the feat of relaying the complex plot through concise dialogue and daring images.

Another driving force of Orlando is Tilda. From the moment we first see this film, Orlando becomes Tilda, and we cannot help but be drawn in by her androgynous, angelic appearance and her eyes, which resemble two dark marbles.

While the book immerses us in the intimate reflections and psychological make-up of Orlando, the film eliminates the fourth wall. Orlando looks directly at the camera, that is, into our eyes, laying bare feelings and seeking connection.

On becoming a woman, Orlando, naked, declares: “Same person, no difference at all. Just a different sex.”

This is a powerful affirmation that contrasts with a society that refuses to say the same, instead imposing strict norms and separate conditions for men and women. No matter how much Orlando experiences and learns what is expected of men and women, the character is always someone out of step with the norm and, thus, able to see through it and question it.

What is a woman? A category created by men as they see fit and that only they can explain? A corseted creature, her movements forever restricted by the weight and volume of her own clothes?

And what is a man? Is an enemy of war still a man, or simply a thing that should be left for dead? Orlando is a fish out of water and, therefore, a fish that can still discover what water is. With poetry, innocence and the ability to wonder at things, Orlando consistently sidesteps what different societies declare to be the social and biological destiny of a man or a woman.

Orlando lives for almost 400 years, switching not only between sexes/genders, but also trends of fashion and thought, from the Elizabethan period to the 20th century, passing through the Baroque and Romantic eras. As time passes, they take their destiny in their own hands and become, consciously, not a man or a woman, but a person.

Recently, the philosopher and writer Paul B. Preciado took up Woolf’s novel to film his own political biography. For Preciado, all trans people are Orlando: people whose circumstances oblige them to question gender categories.

I won’t say that Sally Potter’s Orlando is a trans film, but it is a queer film that reacts to the homophobia and neo-conservatism in the UK of that time.

In 1988, in the middle of the AIDS crisis, Margaret Thatcher’s government introduced Section 28, a law prohibiting the “promotion of homosexuality”. This homophobic measure led to the censuring of books, plays, films and any material that addressed same-sex relationships. Section 28 would only be repealed in 2003.

One detail in a film full of them: the role of Queen Elizabeth I is played by Quentin Crisp, a popular gay icon, in drag. In the 1990s, shortly before dying, Crisp, who had previously self-identified as a gay man, came out as a transgender woman. How many years must we live in order to tell our own stories?