A young man paces up and down, by a tree, reading poetry. The same young man interrupts himself in voiceover, overlapping the diegetic dialogue with narration – “there can be no doubt about his sex” – he says, introducing what will become one of the central themes of this story.
A story of a man who lives for hundreds of years and eventually, quite naturally, becomes a woman. He mentions “upbringing and privilege” – two things that cannot be ignored in an English story. And he mentions his “portrait on the wall and his name in the history books” – so legacy, captured in art is also a concern.
The young man then interrupts himself again – this time, the onscreen version wrestles with himself, to move from third to first person – VO: “but when he” onscreen: “that is I” VO: “came into the world…” And when he says these three words, he breaks the fourth wall and looks directly into the camera.
A thrilling and shocking moment. Orlando‘s opening is one of the most complex character introductions of all time and is indicative of the duality that exists within this character.
Diagloue becomes voiceover, moves back to dialogue, then voiceover again. Our protagonist – Orlando (Tilda Swinton) – has also looked directly through the camera, at us, his audience and addressed us directly. He is not passive and now, neither are we, we are both active participants in what we’re about to witness. Just as soliloquies and asides do in Shakespeare’s plays, the character is letting us in on the secret. We are now complicit.
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The Souvenir also starts with voiceover. That of protagonist Julie (Honor Swinton-Byrne) explaining her film, set in 1980s Sunderland, over black-and-white photographs that reveal the deprivation of the area. It then abruptly cuts to a flat in London “right now I’m in Knightsbridge, in a really nice flat…” sings one of Julie’s friends.
Upbringing and privilege – chief among English preoccupations. But unlike Orlando, Julie will remain a passive observer for much of her story. Things happen to her, chiefly a relationship that fundamentally changes her, but it is only towards the end of the film that she starts to be more assertive and exhibits more agency. When you realise that this is a heavily autobiographical story from writer-director Joanna Hogg, it is even more interesting to consider how much Julie reacts to outside influences, rather than being the active ‘hero’ of her own life.
Sally Potter interweaves drag and gender nonconformity into Orlando in the most theatrical way possible. Reminding us that male actors played female characters on stage for many years and that drag is still part of the British tradition of pantomime. She also uses two of the most famous gay celebrities of the time in iconic roles within the film.
In a stroke of genius, Quentin Crisp (famously played by John Hurt in The Naked Civil Servant) plays Queen Elizabeth I. And Jimmy Somerville (of the 80s bands Bronski Beat and The Communards), who is known for his falsetto singing voice, is a eunuch at the start of the film and he reappears as an angel at the end, singing “here I am, neither a woman nor a man…”
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Both Orlando and The Souvenir use framing, lighting and colour choices which are inspired by classical paintings throughout. And at significant moments, both Potter and Hogg centre their protagonists as if they are posing for a portrait.
Hogg sets several scenes at Hertford House (home of The Wallace Collection, of which the titular painting The Souvenir is a part). The framing of Julie in a mirror, in the middle of a Venice hotel room, overstuffed with antique furniture and an enormous tapestry is another example of making her protagonist look insignificant within overwhelming surroundings. Julie is then seen in an over-the-top grey silk ballgown, going to the ballet or opera, but only shot from behind. The camera focusing on the train of the dress as it ascends various staircases – once again, making her anonymous, nebulous, lacking in identity.
This shot mirrors Orlando running through the maze in a panic, when she realizes she will probably lose the house that was bequeathed to her by Queen Elizabeth, because she’s now a woman. Orlando’s identity is constantly fluctuating – she enters the maze in an extremely wide dress and extremely tall powdered wig, in the fashion of the time (1750) and emerges from the maze in a much darker, simpler dress in the style of the time she is in now (1850).
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She collapses on the grass and exclaims “nature, I am your bride, take me!” which one could imagine being a line of Emily Dickinson poetry (but are, in fact, of course Virginia Woolf’s words). Romantic hero Billy Zane then falls off his horse, twists his ankle and has to be rescued by Orlando, in an ingenious reverse of the trope we are used to seeing in Jane Austen novels.
Orlando’s assertion that “a knife’s blade separates melancholy from happiness” is certainly true of Julie, whose happiness is entirely dependent on the whims of her drug-addicted boyfriend. It is only once (spoiler alert) her boyfriend dies that Julie finally starts to take some ownership of her life and work. She stops trying to make a film that is entirely outside of her own experience and instead makes something more personal.
The final shots see Julie confronting herself, through her lens. She then turns her gaze out towards the camera, looking at director Joanna Hogg (who she is based on) and us. There is so much power in this look, she is clearly still devastated and grief-ridden, but also accepting of herself.
The end of Orlando circles back to the start, but this time, she is not alone, she is with her daughter (played by Tilda Swinton’s niece, Jessica) – “there can be no doubt about her sex” she says in voiceover, again. “She’s no longer trapped by destiny and ever since she let go of the past, she found her life was beginning” – words that could absolutely apply to the final shots of Julie.
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Orlando’s daughter is playing with a video camera (as the story has come all the way to the present day) and she films her mother’s beatific face, which is crying with happiness. Orlando was playing around with poetry at the start and now it’s a movie camera – the artform has moved on, from spoken/written language to visual language – she is no longer looking inward, but being observed by her daughter’s gaze, assured in her identity as a mother.
This is the opposite journey to Julie, who has looked outward throughout her story, but is finally turning her gaze and concern in on herself. Hopefully towards some self-care. Both Orlando and Julie wrestle with the ‘mortifying ordeal of being known.’
So – beyond the obvious connections between Orlando and The Souvenir – Joanna Hogg and Tilda Swinton being school friends, Swinton acting in Hogg’s final film at film school, Tilda’s daughter Honor Swinton-Byrne playing Julie and Tilda playing her mother – there are deeper connections.
Both films, in the finest British traditions of film directors such as Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman (and more) utilise the visual language of both the theatre and classical art worlds. They also both frame their protagonists in self-aware ways, playing with our discomfort as voyeurs when the gaze of the one we are watching is turned back on us. Both films force us to consider the inherent power of a look.
