50
It's visually intoxicating, with its lavish ruffs and furbelows, stately homes and manicured gardens, jewels and silks and elaborately curled hair, but there's less to ORLANDO than meets the eye.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
60
Swinton's intoxicating lead turn and Potter's aesthetic eye make up for the majority of the film's failings and flaws.
67
Austin Chronicle by Marjorie Baumgarten
Holding this highly mannered but incredibly beautiful work together is lead actress Swinton who appears in nearly every shot. Also a favorite of director Derek Jarman, Swinton conveys such an intelligence and grace that it penetrates and expands whatever material she is handling. Let's hope that the arthouse success of Orlando makes Swinton a more frequent visitor to our shores.
50
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
As a fantasy, Orlando has been spun out of a rather glib idea: that the mere assertion of Androgyny As Destiny is automatically a brave, emotionally triumphant stance for our time. The truth is, when androgyny is shrouded in this much deadening ”art,” it becomes little more than a haughty exercise in academic chic.
80
Washington Post by Rita Kempley
Swinton is elegantly comic, but also strangely cartoonish.... A funny and forthright screen presence, she is the foil for the stately pace and the opulent sets -- the most ravishing since "Bram Stoker's Dracula." There is only one conclusion: Potter, the little smarty-pants, is pulling our cross-gartered gams. She's having us on with this spoof of the prissy masterpiece theatricality.
88
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Directed with sly grace and quiet elegance by Sally Potter, it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence.
75
Baltimore Sun by Stephen Hunter
Generally, Orlando is too busy having witty fun to turn into a cautionary tale against one sex in favor of the other. It's more like an extremely vivid drawing-room comedy imposed on the background of a historical epic.