Freak Orlando
Freak Orlando is a 1981 West German comedy film directed by Ulrike Ottinger and starring Magdalena Montezuma. It is based on Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography.
Plot
The film is divided into five acts in which the main character Orlando, with different genders and hardly aging himself, experiences various eras from the Baroque period to the present day.In the first act, Orlando is a nobleman in his twenties at the court of King James I of England); in the second, he is an ambassador to Constantinople on behalf of King James II of England; in the third, Orlando returns to 18th-century England as a woman and marries a naval officer there in the 19th century. In the 20th century, Orlando, now around 40 years old, leads a life similar to Woolf as an emancipated intellectual and poet.
The film ends with a "Festival of the Ugly," where lame people dance and dwarfs make faces before a jury and accompanied by four dancing Playboy "bunnies." A seemingly bourgeois pharmaceutical salesman is ultimately crowned the winner.
Cast
- Magdalena Montezuma – Orlando, als Pilger, Orlando Zyldopa, Orlando Orlanda, Orlando Capricho
- Hans Langerschlanger – Muntzy Pimplips
- Delphine Seyrig – Helena Müller, als Lebensbaumgöttin, Kaufhausonsängerin, Mutter der Wundergeburt
- Albert Heins – Herbert Zeus
- Claudio Pantoja – Zwei Tänzer
- Hiro Uchiyama – Zwei Tänzer
- Galli – Chronistin
- Eddie Constantine – Säulenheiliger
- Else Nabu – Heilige Wilgeforte
- Maria Bucholt – Kleine Menschen
- Paul Glauer – Kleine Menschen
- Alfred Raupach – Kleine Menschen
- Luzig Raupach – Kleine Menschen
- Monika Ullemeyer – Kleine Menschen
- Dirk Zalm – Kleine Menschen
- Luc Alexander – Zwolf Lederboys