Orlando, My Political Biography
The Spanish writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado takes Virginia Woolf’s celebrated novel and considers it afresh.
Image courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment
Born at Burgos in Spain in 1970, Paul B. Preciado is well established as a writer, philosopher and curator but with Orlando: My Political Biography he enters into a new sphere as a filmmaker. Not only is he credited as its writer and director but he also appears in it and what he gives us could be described as an essay film, one that is unusually individual. It has certainly grown out of his other work since Wikipedia lists identity, gender and sexuality as being among Preciado’s major established concerns and he is here expressing ideas that build on his responses to a literary classic, Virginia Woolf’s fantasy novel Orlando, A Biography published in 1928. In that work Woolf imagined an aristocrat of the Elizabethan age who would live on for four centuries during which time he would one day wake up and find that he had become a woman. It's a novel that Preciado can relate to in a special way having himself been registered as female at birth and having subsequently, or so I am told, identified in turn as a lesbian, non-binary and a trans man.
Orlando has, of course, been filmed before, most notably by Sally Potter in 1992, but Preciado’s film, while containing an outline of Woolf’s novel and indeed including readings from it, adopts an approach which makes it quite distinct from those other adaptations. Indeed, one could go further and say that this is a film which, virtually defying categorisation, is unlike any other movie that has preceded it. Very contemporary in nature, it contains strong documentary elements since it features along with Preciado himself over twenty people of trans identity who embrace who they are and as part of that are happy to be considered modern Orlandos. Some of what they say is personal and relates directly to their own experiences but they are also stand-ins rather than actors as such who can re-enact or recount various phases in the life of Woolf’s creation. That's a blend that can sometimes be rather confusing.
Although Preciado is Spanish, his film is a French production and its philosophical character makes it in some ways very characteristic of that country’s cinema. Nevertheless, the mixture of styles adopted renders it unique. At times we are made aware that this is a film being shot on a set while a link between the modern Orlandos and the period tale of the novel is found in the ruffs that are worn by many of the participants. Elsewhere, however, when Preciado opts to fill in key phases in the lives of trans people that were irrelevant to Woolf’s fantasy he gives us scenes that are both stylised and contemporary. They range from an entirely serious passage about the way in which passports and other administrative papers can become problematic for those who don't recognise the sex officially assigned to them at birth to a mocking episode in which a doctor played by Frédéric Pierrot refuses to recognise the view that his patients have of themselves. That same sequence provides the doctor with a waiting room full of Orlandos and leads into a musical number which in its lyrics rejects all that the doctor stands for and represents. In contrast to that some of the period recreations involve richly designed tableaux.
There is no doubt that Orlando: My Political Biography is a heartfelt film and those who feel as impassioned as Preciado about the issues covered in it may well excuse those elements that don't always cohere. At times its mix of Woolf’s storyline with the expression of contemporary views (at one stage the subject of colonialism comes into it too) suggests that it is attempting too much. Furthermore, some footage (such as black and white TV material from the 1950s featuring two trans women of that decade, Christine Jorgensen and Coccinelle) hardly fits the tone of what surrounds it. Nevertheless, the timeliness of the subject matter ensures that this is a film of note and its stand is an interesting one. Rather than being concerned with current controversies over how trans children should be treated, this is very much a deeply-felt attack on a society built on clear distinctions between masculinity and femininity. Viewing life as a series of metamorphoses, it is less about people who feel they have been born into the wrong sex than about the belief that being non-binary should be seen as meaning that all phases through which one passes are part of the person that you are. It asserts that those like Preciado - and like Woolf’s Orlando - go through a process not of change but of continuation and development because what they become is all part of the flow that makes up their lives.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Paul B. Preciado, Oscar S. Miller, Janis Sahraoui, Jenny Bel’Air, Liz Christin, Elios Levy, Victor Marzouk, Kori Ceballos, Vanasay Khamphommala, Ruben Rizza, Amir Bailly, Naelle Darlya, Emma Avena, Frédéric Pierrot, Virginie Despentes, Pierre et Gilles, Castiel Emery.
Dir Paul B. Preciado, Pro Yael Fogiel, Annie Ohaydn-Dekel, Laetitia Gonzalez and Farid Rezkhallah, Screenplay Paul B. Preciado, freely adapted from the novel Orlando, A Biography by Virginia Woolf, Ph Victor Zebo, Art Dir Anna Le Mouël, Ed Yotam Ben-David, Music Clara Deshayes, Costumes Thomas Goudou and Caroline Spieth.
Les Films du Poisson/24 Images/Arte France-Picturehouse Entertainment.
99 mins. France/Italy. 2023. US Rel: 10 November 2023. UK Rel: 5 July 2024. Cert. 12A.
