I've seen "Orlando," and while I didn't particularly think it good, it did have Tilda doing what she does best. Its always a wonder, following someone with pretensions to do artistic things, things with weight. When you find someone whose art seems valuable, its always fun to go to their early work and see them struggle with various demons of immaturity. Its less fun to follow a lessor artist back in time.
What we have here is the first work of a decidedly lessor artist. But this fails in an interesting way, at least.
When watching this, you have to understand the precedents. Smith had done "Flaming Creatures" (and similar), which imposed a floating narrative over apparently disconnected images. "La Jetee" used stills to compose a hauntingly effective science fiction "movie," loosely remade as "12 Monkeys." And Greenaway had made a series of early movies with extremely rich dialog over dreaming images. If you know all these, you could have a machine generate "Thriller," and that's what seems to have happened.
This is a series of stills and simple shots. Some are of an opera. The narrator/victim is engaged in a simple narrative fold: art equals unhappy love equals death. Creation of art implies all three "crimes." Such a thing can work. But you need arresting visuals, a cinematic mind and you need to be an interesting person. If you have none of these things the condition we face here you end up with a pretentious, annoying student.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
