Freak Orlando

In what she describes as a “small theatre of the world”, Ulrike Ottinger explores the span of human history in this deeply surreal, outré romp.

Across five sweeping, nonlinear adventures, the multi-named, gender-fluid and barely ageing Orlando (played by avant-garde New German Cinema star Magdalena Montezuma) explores the history of civilisation. From a modern department store in Freak City to medieval times, and from the Spanish Inquisition to a carnival sideshow, Orlando ultimately lands in Northern Italy for a competition crowning “The Ugliest Person of the Year”. A punk shapeshifter, our hero jostles with a wild cast of acrobats and performers with a diverse array of bodies and identities – including self-flagellating leather boys, the “Freak Orlando bunnies”, and conjoined twins memorably played by legendary French New Wave figure Jackie Raynal and frequent Ulrike Ottinger collaborator Delphine Seyrig (who appears throughout in multiple roles).

A loose adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s epic 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography by way of Tod Browning’s infamous 1932 horror Freaks, this is the second in Ottinger’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, wedged between Ticket of No Return and Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press. Described by Ottinger as a “histoire du monde”, or “small theatre of the world”, Freak Orlando is perhaps her most unclassifiable film. A cinematic fever dream, it challenges idealised norms of beauty, gender and sexuality through pageantry – an assemblage of irreverent tableaux vivants in lush colour and extravagant costuming.

“A freewheeling, confounding, frequently hilarious, often opaque, and awe-inspiring picaresque paean to, indeed, letting one’s freak flag fly … visually sumptuous”– Screen Slate

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Content: Melbourne International Film Festival