(1992; English and French) In the last days of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Quentin Crisp), as the allure of her gender disappears in old age, the monarch chooses a new favorite, a nobleman in the full bloom of youth, Orlando (Tilda Swinton). With feminine features, to which so many of his age aspired, and heir to land, property, and power, Orlando instead desires company. The queen favors her mascot with a generous gift of the family estate: "On one condition. Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old."

Four hundred years stream through director/screenwriter Sally Potter's fantasy film (critically recognized for costumes and art direction), as do the events of Virginia Woolf's 1928 allegorical, stream-of-consciousness novel, as sardonic and ironic demonstration of the equality of female and male intellects.

In the frigid winter of 1610, his queen and his parents deceased, Orlando - telling his friend the Earl of Moray, who expresses concern about the ruin of a promising career by courting a foreigner: "I'm only interested in love" - dispenses with a betrothal to Euphrosyne ("The treachery of men") for the hand and lips of the Russian ambassador's daughter, Alexandra Menchikova (Charlotte Valandrey): "A man must follow his heart."

Remarking on his strange melancholy ("You suffer in advance"), Princess Sasha looks upon Orlando's large mansion where he lives isolated and alone. Waiting for her to come to him as prearranged, he watches the death scene of Othello with Desdemona in Shakespeare's tragedy; Sasha, however, sails away with the breaking of the ice: "The treachery of women!" For six continuous days Orlando remains asleep.

Forty years later, seeking the company and mentorship of poet Nick Greene (Heathcote Williams), cynical ("The art of poetry is dead in England") and o so sensitive, craving a patron and a pension of £300 a year, Orlando sadly discovers that his own verse is "trivia from a dabbler's hand" and that "the mind of leisure" cannot produce literature.

Flouncing about in the fancy, feminine fashions and elaborate wigs of 1700, Orlando becomes England's ambassador to an Arab land ("spacious and warm") where the Khan (Lothaire Bluteau) recognizes the young representative as "a casualty of love" but suspects the British imperialist government's ulterior motives. When the Archduke Harry (John Wood) arrives to congratulate Orlando on his promotion to the Order of Bath ("the highest rank in the peerage"), the celebration is rudely interrupted. "I was expecting you as a guest," says Orlando to the Khan, "not entertaining hostilities." But with the Khan's enemies outside the gates, he needs Orlando's aid as proof of English worthiness.

Bloodshed is unappealing; after another long sleeping spell, Orlando wakes as a woman: "Same person … Just different sex." In the mid-eighteenth century Lady Orlando takes an interest in society, though her loyal servant cautions that it's full of dangerous persons, especially wits and poets.

In a gown so wide she needs an entire couch for her perch, Lady Orlando listens to Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and Joseph Addison entertaining an elderly lady. "A little learning can be dangerous," quips Pope. "I must write that down at once," chirps the crone. "I already have, madam." Upon protesting their low opinions of women, Lady Orlando is promptly informed by Addison that a woman, such as herself, without male mentors, "is lost."

Lawsuits are brought to bear against her inheritance: "You are legally dead … and a female." But when Harry (of whom Pope had said: "Every poet is a fool, but every fool is not a poet") offers his hand to her with his even larger estate - "I am England, and you are mine" - she graciously declines. "Who else will have you?" he demands: "You will die a spinster, dispossessed and alone."

Another century passes as she races through a maze, emerging with an exclamation: "Nature! Nature! I am your bride. Take me!" Handsome romantic hero Shelmerdine (Billy Zane), landing from his horse on the ground beside Lady Orlando, inquires: "You are hurt, ma'am?" "I am dead," she replies. With the lawsuits finally settled, she needs an heir to secure the estate, but Shelmerdine, an American in pursuit of liberty - urging her to choose the future over the past - wants her to return with him to the United States.

She enters the war-torn 20th century pregnant, gives birth to a daughter (Jessica Swinton, Tilda's actual daughter), and produces a manuscript of her life to a publisher. Pulling up at her home in a motorbike with her child in sidecar, tall and slender, Orlando's has the androgynous appearance to which so many aspire.

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