Orlando, My Political Biography - Fresh Takes

Dir: Paul B. Preciado

Cast: twenty actors playing Orlando

98 mins · 2024 · · Cert not specified · ·

Orlando, My Political Biography is a bold and joyous celebration of trans and non-binary lives, told through the lens of Virginia Woolf's iconic novel. The film is an experimental visual essay that delves into experiences of gender transition. An ensemble of trans and non-binary actors blend their biographical accounts with Orlando's fictional journey. The film's narration often directly responds to Woolf's text, highlighting how trans people's right to bodily autonomy continues to be seized by institutions of power.

The film is at its most successful when it reads less like written theory and more like a visual tale told by symbols. The artifice of filmmaking is delicately employed into a criticism of other deliberate constructions, pointedly the colonial notion of gender as binary and dictated by the anatomy one is born into.

Throughout the film, we're allowed to see the film crew at work, the seams of the creative sets — a celebration, perhaps, of the shared artifice of creating a film and constructing a self. The film itself rejects the traditional structure of sequence after sequence of heavy dialogue and conventional performances, flowing from interviews to theatre-like performances, and even to a musical number.

Orlando, My Political Biography is a spiritual experience; it breathes with you like a rousing chorus. The film is a love letter to the destruction of the binary, with twenty actors playing the titular Orlando, a blend of their life experiences and Virginia's Woolf's novel is produced. As the actors sit donning modern clothes, a sense of liberation bursts forth, and it's joyous to witness the vitality that these trans and non-binary actors possess.