Orlando is a man, a young English aristocrat in the time of the Queen [Elisabeth Ire](Elisabeth I: “I have the heart and the guts of a king and, what is more, of a king of England”). He lives at his court, then at that of King Jacques. Having become ambassador to Constantinople, that is to say, gone to another country, Orlando leaves there for another sex. Trumpets play a tune titled “THE TRUTH” and Orlando awakens as a woman. She is thirty. The marvelous thing, and if I say marvelous it’s because it’s a storytelling figure, where the supernatural is natural, is that Orlando is neither surprised, nor worried, nor delighted to have changed sex. She is a woman, that’s how it is. Even though she realizes it’s not that easy, she thanks God for making her so.
58 min
We are now in the 18th and then the 19th century. Orlando dresses sometimes as a woman, sometimes as a man. It is as a man that she is most free, alas. Orlando-woman dresses up as a man so she can walk around London at night. She marries, with a man, of course, and gives birth to a child, which is a boy.
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