The rad­i­cal­ly non-bina­ry nature of Sal­ly Potter’s Orlando

From the very begin­ning, Sal­ly Potter’s film adap­ta­tion of Orlan­do brings the body of its title char­ac­ter to the fore­ground; the open­ing lines of nar­ra­tion argue that ​“there can be no doubt­ing his sex.” But the thing that ani­mates Orlan­do the most is this very idea of doubt; that in spite of the sur­face lev­el appear­ance of Til­da Swinton’s title char­ac­ter, and all the assump­tions that come with it, and in spite of the fact it can’t be doubt­ed at first glance, that the truth below the sur­face is more nuanced.

The com­plex­i­ty of gen­der – how it’s pre­sent­ed, per­formed, and what it means to appear as one bina­ry gen­der or anoth­er – go to the heart of Orlan­do. Even before being blessed with some­thing like eter­nal youth, there are strik­ing visu­al par­al­lels between the ​“male” ver­sion of Orlan­do, and the female Queen Eliz­a­beth (played by Quentin Crisp). Mir­rors and echoes, both in visu­als and dia­logue, are one of the ways in which Orlan­do the film is able to explore the inher­ent­ly non-bina­ry nature of Orlan­do the character.

The visu­al par­al­lel between Orlan­do and Eliz­a­beth is pow­er­ful not just because of the ways in which it chal­lenges the idea of what per­form­ing gen­der looks like – with a female actor play­ing Orlan­do, and a male one play­ing the queen – but also by high­light­ing the idea of visu­al sim­i­lar­i­ty between char­ac­ters who are pre­sent­ed as either male or female; in doing this, Orlan­do able to carve out a space for its epony­mous hero(ine) that’s able to exist in-between the two bina­ries that are embod­ied by Orlan­do and Eliz­a­beth in the film’s open­ing sec­tion. It’s this glee in sub­vert­ing expec­ta­tions around gen­der that turns Orlan­do into some­thing explic­it­ly non-bina­ry, a rar­i­ty in even con­tem­po­rary queer or trans cinema.

The ​“male” ver­sion of Orlan­do is also a sub­ver­sion of gen­dered norms in cin­e­ma; even more so than after their transformation/​transition, it’s the first iter­a­tion of the char­ac­ter that’s most often gazed at, and treat­ed as an object of desire; even when Orlan­do is mourn­ing the pass­ing of Eliz­a­beth, oth­er mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion argue that ​“mourn­ing so becomes him,” even in his ​“time of grief.”

The way that this ver­sion of Orlan­do is seen and treat­ed by those around them cre­ates a cin­e­mat­ic short­hand with the fem­i­nine; in spite of the fact that they look male – pos­sess­ing, iron­i­cal­ly, what the nar­ra­tion calls the ​“fem­i­nine appear­ance that every young man of the era aspires to” – the world around them responds in a way that’s nor­mal­ly reserved for female char­ac­ters: to be looked at, treat­ed as an object of desire.

It’s desire that holds a fas­ci­nat­ing mir­ror up to Orlando’s gen­der, and the ways in which it’s informed by the way that they’re pre­sent­ing at the time; after being reject­ed, they decry ​“the treach­ery of women,” some­thing that they go on to echo as ​“the treach­ery of men” in their post-trans­for­ma­tion life. It’s after these incred­i­bly gen­dered moments, evok­ing or decry­ing the bina­ry ideas of man and woman, that Orlan­do looks out at the cam­era; there’s some­thing know­ing in that sly smile, a way of say­ing to the view­er ​“I’m not like that.”

Even as some dia­logue, from the treach­ery of (wo)men, say­ing some­thing as sim­ple as ​“I adore you,” is echoed through­out, it’s the way in which Orlan­do presents and is per­ceived that informs the kind of impact that these things have. Orlan­do is a film about this kind of pre­sen­ta­tion; its reflec­tions and lim­i­ta­tions. And it would be impos­si­ble to talk about Orlan­do with­out talk­ing about the trans­for­ma­tion that divides both the film and its title char­ac­ter; on the sur­face, it’s this seem­ing­ly overnight change from ​“man” to ​“woman” that would mark the film as trans; with this trans­for­ma­tion act­ing as a kind of tran­si­tion. But the impor­tance of the lan­guage used after Orlan­do gazes at their new body in the mir­ror chal­lenges the idea that this is sim­ply a move from one bina­ry state to anoth­er: ​“same per­son. No dif­fer­ence at all. Just a dif­fer­ent sex.”

It’s this con­stant chal­leng­ing of what being ​“male” or ​“female” looks or acts like that allows Orlan­do to move in the direc­tion of both a gen­dered rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and kind of cin­e­ma, that’s explic­it­ly non-bina­ry. Orlan­do doesn’t become a new per­son after their body changes; what’s inter­est­ing is instead the way in which the rest of the world sees them, and how mov­ing through the world in a body seen as male impacts the ways in which this new ver­sion of Orlan­do responds to these per­cep­tions and expectations.

They imme­di­ate­ly break bound­aries in their new body by going alone to events where it’s assumed a woman would have a part­ner or chap­er­one of some kind; they chal­lenge the ways in which their male com­pa­ny dis­cuss and deride women. This is more than just the idea of Orlan­do becom­ing a ​“strong woman,” or exer­cis­ing inde­pen­dence in a way that’s sur­pris­ing for a woman, but instead about the ways in which mov­ing through the world in dif­fer­ent bod­ies has allowed them to find their own, unique kind of lib­er­a­tion. It’s no won­der that one of the things that’s most com­pelling to Orlan­do is the advent of trains, described as ​“the sound of the future.”

The final nar­ra­tive coup of Orlan­do comes through a moment of stun­ning self-aware­ness. The title char­ac­ter, now liv­ing a con­tem­po­rary life, has a meet­ing with a pub­lish­er about a book that they’ve writ­ten: the sto­ry of their life. From the very begin­ning, Orlan­do has been a self-aware sto­ry; the open­ing nar­ra­tion is dis­rupt­ed when the title char­ac­ter direct­ly address­es the cam­era, break­ing the voice-over. But more than just being a con­tin­u­a­tion of these ideas, the end of Orlan­do reveals that it’s always been about Orlan­do them­selves telling their own sto­ry, refus­ing to fall into the sim­ple and bina­ry cat­e­gories that the world often tries to put them into.

It’s through this con­tin­ued dis­rup­tion of expec­ta­tion, first plant­ed at the very begin­ning of the film, that Orlan­do is able to present itself as some­thing rad­i­cal­ly trans – their ​“male­ness” exists in tan­dem and ten­sion with the ways in which they’re often treat­ed as a more ​“female” object of desire, just as the post-trans­for­ma­tion char­ac­ter wouldn’t exist with­out the ear­li­er chap­ter in their life. These ideas of echoes and his­to­ry – and the ways in which Orlan­do chal­lenges the lim­its of these ideas – all come to a head when they final­ly return to the home that was once theirs, cen­turies ago.

When their eyes meet the Eliz­a­bethan por­trait in their like­ness, it cap­tures how Orlan­do has tran­scend­ed the expec­ta­tions and the image star­ing back at them; that this moment of still­ness, con­signed to his­to­ry, is some­thing that has been able to stay alive and keep trans­form­ing. These final moments of tran­scen­dence, from Orlan­do look­ing at that age-old por­trait, to the angel that seems to vis­it them and their child, reveal a fig­ure who has always been telling their own sto­ry, in an act that still remains radical.

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