Sleeping Beauty (2011) - Julia Leigh

Synopsis:
A university student looks to make extra money by becoming an erotic waitress. When she looks to get more money she becomes a Sleeping Beauty, a woman who is put to sleep as the rich and powerful pay to have time with them. Understandably, she becomes highly interested in what happens while she's asleep and seeks answers.

“Errrm... what?” This was the shared reaction of me and my girlfriend as the credits began to roll after Sleeping Beauty. But this isn't the Sleeping Beauty you may be familiar with. This is much... MUCH different. If you're expecting it to be even slightly related to the Disney film and buy it expecting a quaint tale of a princess awakened by a princes kiss, you'd be insanely wrong in doing so. In fact, as the 18 certificate may suggest, it's closer related to the original Brothers Grimm fairytale where Sleeping Beauty gets raped by the Prince while she's asleep. However, the reason for the “Errrm... what?” reaction is because it actually doesn't really have a story at all. So it's hard to say it's based on the fairytale, something which definitely had a story, when if anything it just appears to be a series of events that happen to a girl I really don't care about.

For most of the film you're left to just assume things, like I assume she is trying to pay off her university bills by being a waitress/prostitute?/medical experiment/ despite the fact it doesn't look like she cares about her degree or even has time for it. I'm just assuming she's a prostitute of course, the fact that two older men start a conversation with her and her friend (presumably) with “Which one of us do you get to fuck?” is a pretty piss poor way of chatting up a girl. In between all of her jobs I'm left to assume that she has a boyfriend/a boyfriend who she cant kiss/just a friend/some guy she likes drinking vodka with. I do know that she cares about him, I don't know why, or what his name is, but she cries when she finds out he's dying, not that we as an audience know that until we see her at a wake in a later scene. Just a waste of time introducing this character (or any character for that matter), he doesn't push the story, he doesn't help us get an understanding of who she is, he does nothing and then dies. Great. Not to mention the girl doesn't even appear to care afterwards either despite crying her heart out earlier. The film is full of non-sensical stuff which doesn't help the narrative in anyway shape of form. At some point an old guy, before having his way with the sleeping beauty, goes off on a monologue, and it was a very interesting monologue about becoming old, but completely devoid of any relationship to the story or even the scene that he was in. The whole time I was thinking, why are you doing this? Why show us stuff if it means nothing, if it doesn't even paint a picture of the characters or scene or even tone. Somehow I was able to sit through this whole film with relative interest, thinking that it will all come together soon, foolishly I might add. The film of course ends... which seems to be a running theme in a lot of the films I'm watching nowadays. I mean, it takes the entire length of the film to finally generate a plot and then ten minutes later our lead actress has a cry and the whole thing is over. It's just like, well what was the point in the film if nothing happens? If I don't care about anything I just saw?

I'll give props to Emily Browning for going through what she went through with the old guys and being naked for an unreasonable amount of time. Even then, every sexual scenario felt awkward to me. Like the actors involved couldn't even take it seriously, kind of an embarrassment really. I just don't see the need to do this film. I cant see how it will help Browning's career, it's just such a waste of time. Is she just trying to show people she looks good naked? It's not showing off any acting as the most important scenes she's motionless for. I just can't get over how stupid and pointless and pretentious this film is. To be honest I was very surprised to see that a man didn't direct and write this film, as all she (Julia Leigh) has done is made an elegant vehicle for men to masturbate to. I can literally see it holding no other purpose. Even that will be difficult because for the duration of the flick you'll be saying “Errrm... what?”. No scenario is convincing (an advert for a naked maid in a student paper? Really? REALLY?) and the believability of the characters is non-existent. It's only saving grace is the well laid out shots, some fairly decent cinematography and that it's just an all around beautiful aesthetic, it's like watching a Vermeer painting. 

Overview:

You'll sit through this film wondering what's going to happen, waiting for all the vagueness to be cleared up, only to have your hopes dashed. Still slightly tempted to go back through to see if there was anything I missed but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Rating:

★★