Sleeping Beauty (2011)

Before I get into the review itself, I just need to warn you, this is NOT the Disney film Sleeping Beauty, but rather an Australian arthouse film from a few years ago.

Lucy (Emily Browning) is a young university student who is struggling to make ends meet. She works several jobs, including waitressing at a local pub, and copy girl in an office. She also gives her time to clinical trials at the university clinic for any extra cash.

She has a very strange kind of relationship with a young guy called Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) that isn’t quite purely platonic and isn’t quite sexual, but the two of them have a very strange connection that seems to mainly be about companionship. She often has one-night stands with strangers she meets in another bar (not the one she works at), and seems to be doing this to express herself as a powerful young woman, rather than as a helpless victim.

Lucy (Emily Browning) and Birdmann (Ewen Leslie).

She is usually late on paying her rent, and as a result, is evicted from the flat she is staying in with friends.

Desperate to make even more money, she answers a peculiar advertisement in the student newspaper, and is hired by a woman who introduces herself as Clara (Rachael Blake), who runs a very odd sort of agency, staffed entirely by attractive young girls.

The job starts off as holding dinner parties for gentlemen, at which all the servers are in various states of undress the entire time. Nothing particularly sexual goes on at these parties, but they are unsettling nonetheless. Emily goes along with this, though, because she is paid cash in hand, and a lot of cash at that.

Lucy (Emily Browning) and Clara (Rachael Blake).

It isn’t long before she moves on to the next stage of her employment with Clara, which involves nothing more than sleeping (under the influence of a sleeping draught), while a man spends the night with her (with the condition that there is no sex involved whatsoever, it seems to simply be about companionship).

But eventually, she begins to wonder just what actually is going on while she is asleep.

The screenplay, written by director Julia Leigh, is very difficult to follow. There is not a great amount of dialogue, and certainly none that explains just what is actually going on.

Geoffrey Simpson’s cinematography is just as unsettling as the film’s subject matter, consisting almost entirely of shots that are quite long in duration, in a way that does little more than disturb the viewer.

Clara (Rachael Blake) and one of her clients (Peter Carroll), with Lucy (Emily Browning) asleep in the bed.

There is almost no music in the film’s 100-minute running time, in fact, the only music at all is in one very brief scene (that makes no sense whatsoever) and it only lasts a few seconds. Composer Ben Frost, who also plays the music itself (it is only a synthesiser after all), doesn’t even really seem to understand the purpose of film music, as it doesn’t seem to suit the moment, anyway.

One of the only good things about this film is Emily Browning’s performance. She portrays the character of Lucy exceptionally well under the circumstances, and establishes herself as a very gifted actor with this film.

Director Julia Leigh has made an incredibly strange and confusing film, that seems to be little more than art for art’s sake. The scenes that feature nudity seem to be there for no other reason than to shock the audience, and do not support the plot or characters at all or indeed have any real point to them.

4 out of 10.