A Film of One's Own

With her ravishing version of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, England's Sally Potter beats the big boys at their game

Civilization aspires to femininity. History has made man's age-old tools of muscles and marauding nearly obsolete; it urges him to put down swords and pick up phones, to value salon charm over brute force, to face adversity through nurturing and networking instead of a quick body chop. What a lovely evolution: men are becoming women. Except in movies, of course -- especially summer movies, where the O.K. Corral never closes and the footfalls of dinosaurs named Arnold and Sly still shake the earth.

So raise a tender toast to Orlando: a sensation at film festivals, a hit in Britain, and, once...

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