Metacritic reviews

Directed with sly grace and quiet elegance by Sally Potter, it is not about a story or a plot, but about a vision of human existence.

Rarely have source material, director, and leading actress been more in alignment than in Orlando.

Swinton is elegantly comic, but also strangely cartoonish.... A funny and forthright screen presence, she is the foil for the stately pace and the opulent sets -- the most ravishing since "Bram Stoker's Dracula." There is only one conclusion: Potter, the little smarty-pants, is pulling our cross-gartered gams. She's having us on with this spoof of the prissy masterpiece theatricality.

Generally, Orlando is too busy having witty fun to turn into a cautionary tale against one sex in favor of the other. It's more like an extremely vivid drawing-room comedy imposed on the background of a historical epic.

What it lacks in coherence it makes up for in sheer spectacle.

Holding this highly mannered but incredibly beautiful work together is lead actress Swinton who appears in nearly every shot. Also a favorite of director Derek Jarman, Swinton conveys such an intelligence and grace that it penetrates and expands whatever material she is handling. Let's hope that the arthouse success of Orlando makes Swinton a more frequent visitor to our shores.

Swinton's intoxicating lead turn and Potter's aesthetic eye make up for the majority of the film's failings and flaws.

Continually clearing its throat to utter something profound about sexuality, this never quite delivers the speech, though its failure to fully engage the mind is made up for by its captivation of the eye.

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.

It's visually intoxicating, with its lavish ruffs and furbelows, stately homes and manicured gardens, jewels and silks and elaborately curled hair, but there's less to ORLANDO than meets the eye.