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:
★★
