The movie presents Orlando's time-tripping odyssey as a series of ornate but flimsy Brechtian sketches, which are meant to illustrate the outmoded sexual roles of different centuries. Orlando begins his journey as a man, because - the implication is - there were no real parts for women to play in 16th-century English society. His evolution into a woman is meant to convey the dawning of contemporary female consciousness. Swinton, her eerie-pale skin set off by various items of high-collared finery, is less an actress here than a stunning found object: She looks so much like a painting of English nobility come to life that she helps root the film in a mythical historical past. Yet a face does not a movie make. As a fantasy, Orlando has been spun out of a rather glib idea: that the mere assertion of Androgyny As Destiny is automatically a brave, emotionally triumphant stance for our time. The truth is, when androgyny is shrouded in this much deadening "art," it becomes little more than a haughty exercise in academic chic.
