Music Views: For there can be no doubt about the sex of this motion picture soundtrack...

The film is Orlando, the star is Tilda Swinton, the director is Sally Potter, and the soundtrack kicks major buttocks forever. The film's director and an English chap created the hauntingly original score to the film adaptation based upon Virginia Woolf's "Biography." There is authentic period music that is very appropriate for the Elizabethan Age in which this delightful little romp based upon gender transformation and living for 400 years does indeed begin. We even have Jimmy Somerville along for the ride, who is a fellow best known for rocking out in such acclaimed Punk bands like Bronski Beat and The Communards. Here, Somerville wails frantically into the microphone about how he is one with the human face, and all the while sounding like a toy poodle in ecstasy. The song John contributes vocals to is essentially the musical theme to the film, a little number referred to as "Coming," which on the soundtrack, also appears at the very end in two different remixed versions. Perhaps Techno-Dance is the right way to refer to this tune? Anyhow, the majority of the soundtrack consists of well orchestrated moaning female voices and cool atmospheric touches on violin strings and icy synthesizers.

Of course, one is best intrigued by the music when actually watching the film, which features an endless array of close-ups of Tilda Swinton's lovely face, and both as a man and a woman, as is the case for this particular film. The film's primary composer, Mr. David Motion, essentially conjures up the Romantic era of Classical music at times, but in such a way that it could almost be referred to as Romantic Minimalism. With such impressive sounds coming from this movie score, it is too bad that Mr. Motion is not somewhat better known, but such is life, oh my doughy little brothers. I rarely speak of album artwork, but this soundtrack contains images to die for. We see Tilda Swinton in a number of different snappy outfits that take place at different points in the film, all of them rather fun to stare at for hours on end. I would like to applaud David Motion as well for some wonderful and period-specific horn arrangements that pop up in places on the soundtrack, truly delightful.

In a lot of respects, this soundtrack reminds me of the one released for Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, and I think you will find it charming and guaranteed to increase your IQ by at least 160 points. All that is left for you to do is to purchase the DVD for Sally Potter's Orlando, and be sure to investigate the impressive filmography of Scottish princess Tilda Swinton, and with a specific interest in reading the novel on which the film is based by Virginia "Hatchet-faced" Woolf, and perhaps even a biography on Woolf herself, if you have the guts? Fear of a Humanist planet? Ha, I think not!

Dig the trailer for the film to get a better idea of what I mean, as merging beautiful music with a beautiful visual is a art unto itself they call The Film Score...