– BERLINALE 2023: Paul B. Preciado puts Virginia Wolf through the sieve of his sharp militant thought. Metamorphoses and crash-tests of sexual identity for a joyful hybrid work
“To be trans is to discover behind the scenes and that this scene has been built… It’s a journey, not a journey. It’s a taking of political possession and it’s in the imagination that this political force.” There was a certain curiosity to discover the first steps of the Spanish filmmaker Paul B. Preciousone of the most advanced thinkers on the study of the politics of gender and the body (author in particular of Counter-sexual manifesto, Text Junkie, Pornotopia et World Dysphoria). The least we can say is that this expectation is not disappointed by the hair-raising, hyper-inventive, intelligent and funny Orlando, my political biography [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]unveiled at the 73e Berlinale in the Encounters competition. And we will not be surprised that the film pays a discreet homage to Jean-Luc Godard so much its explosive and very subjective form, entangling documentary and fiction, rich in telescoping and superimpositions, transfers and daring symbolic links, all crossed with a salutary humor, fits perfectly in the line of the late Swiss maestro. Because when one struggles in existence once morest the binary normative Empire, it goes without saying that the cinematographic representation must also be diverted, like an insurrection of wild flowers enveloped nevertheless by a free but very structured thought.
What is it exactly? To adapt the novel Orlando of Virgina Woolf, published in 1928 and tracing the destiny over four centuries of an English nobleman changing sex. A plot that Paul B. Preciado seizes on both to tell it, to illustrate it and to transpose it into the contemporary world (with the wink of the collarettes of aristocrats) through a multiplication of the main character ( “I don’t want to be another, but others”). As many modern Orlandos which follow one another and evoke by small keys their existences towards the sexual transition. Initial perception of its nature (“the heart filled with torment, loaded with spices and languor”) and social complications, obligatory visit to the psychiatrist (“I am a living body locked up in the normative – Where do these ideas come from? – Reading poetry”) and quest for testosterone (a hilarious sequence, “don’t leave Freud, Lacan, God, the State, the corporations…”), descent into obscurity (“surviving violence to tell our story and tell our story to survive violence”), sexual transition, pitfall of the transphobia of institutions and identity documents (“I am neither madam nor sir, I am Orlando”): by extrapolating with agility intellectual and cinematographic creativity the story of Virginia Wolf, Paul B. Preciado has a field day and hits his target, offering a very seductive craft, modern and philosophical vehicle to his activism (“my change was part of a planetary mutation “) with guest-star fina THE Virginie Despentes in a role of judge (“by the powers conferred on me by Virginia Wolf and literature, I grant citizenship and non-binarity). The message (“I demand respect for myself and for all others who are like me”) passes in a playful, communicative good mood and the messenger demonstrates hands down that he is a filmmaker and an artist of the first order.
Produced by Fish Films and co-produced by 24images et until, Orlando, my political biography is sold internationally by The Party Film Sales.
