Sleeping Beauty (2011 film)

Sleeping Beauty
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Julia Leigh
Produced by	Jessica Brentnall Timothy White Sasha Burrows Jamie Hilton
Screenplay by	Julia Leigh
Starring	Emily Browning Rachael Blake Ewen Leslie Michael Dorman Mirrah Foulkes Henry Nixon
Music by	Ben Frost
Cinematography	Geoffrey Simpson
Editing by	Nick Meyers
Studio	Sundance Selects IFC Films
Release date(s)	12 May 2011 (2011-05-12) (Cannes Film Festival) 23 June 2011 (2011-06-23) (Australia) 2 December 2011 (2011-12-02) (United States)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	‹See Tfd› Australia
Language	English

Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 Australian erotic drama film written and directed by Julia Leigh. It is her debut as a director.^[1] The film stars Emily Browning as a young university student who begins doing erotic freelance work in which she is required to sleep in bed alongside paying customers. The film is based in part on the novel The House of the Sleeping Beauties by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.^[2]

The film premiered in May at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival as the first Competition entry to be screened. It was the first Australian film In Competition at Cannes since Moulin Rouge (dir Baz Luhrmann 2001). Sleeping Beauty was released in Australia on June 23, 2011. It premiered in US cinemas on December 2, 2011 on limited release. Critical reaction to the film was largely mixed.^[3]

Plot

Lucy (Browning) is introduced as a university student who holds a number of odd jobs: She volunteers as a test subject at the university medical research lab performing an experimental activity where she swallows an oesophageal balloon, works as a cleaner/server at a coffee shop, and makes photocopies at an unnamed office. She also is seen at a high-class bar offering herself as a sex partner (it is never shown whether she is paid or not). She has a room where her landlord obviously doesn't like her, and she spends her time visiting an aloof man known only as Birdmann (Leslie). He is attracted to her, but she doesn't return the affection, though she does appear happier with him than at any other time. She serves him breakfast cereal with vodka, while pouring herself a glass as well.

At Lucy's office job, she gets a call from her mother, apparently asking for money. She petulantly gives her mother fake credit card information, while her supervisor looks on, disapprovingly.

Lucy responds to an ad and is invited to meet with Clara (Blake), who describes the job: freelance silver service in lingerie provided by her group. Lucy agrees with no hesitation and Clara says that there is no penetration involved, despite Lucy making it clear that isn't a problem for her. She lies about using drugs and knowing how to do silver service waitressing, but Clara accepts her anyway. Clara says she will call Lucy by the name Sarah, and refers to her as such for the rest of the film.

Lucy is seen getting beauty treatments and showing off her silver-service pouring skills for Birdmann before arriving for the event. She is the only girl dressed in white lingerie, which mostly covers her breasts; the other women present seem much older, have cut-out black lingerie, and wear severe makeup. The event is a formal dinner party at an ornate, elegant home for five elderly gentlemen and one woman. Lucy serves drinks throughout and is excused after having served brandy to the guests. As she is about to leave, she is intentionally tripped by one of the guests and collapses on the floor, smashing the brandy bottle, just as the party turns into more of an orgy between the guests and the other girls. She goes home with the money she made, counts out her rent, then burns one banknote.

Lucy's personal life begins changing at that point. Birdmann confesses that he's not going to make it, begging off detox when it is suggested by Lucy. While in his apartment, Lucy asks if Birdmann will marry her, to which he casually replies yes. It becomes clear that neither is sincere about holding up their end of the proposal, and that this is more of a running joke.

After at least one other session as a serving girl, Lucy gets a call from Clara's assistant Thomas (Eden Falk) for a different request. Lucy is driven to a country mansion where Clara informs her that she'll drink some tea and then fall into a deep sleep. Later we see Lucy lying in a large bed, sedated, as Clara leads in the man who hosted the first dinner party. He recollects a short story he once read to Clara, and expresses a wish to "have all his bones broken." After Clara reminds the man of the no penetration rule and departs, he strips, caresses Lucy's body, and cuddles up next to her as the scene fades.

After a tense conversation with her landlords, Lucy is evicted from her room. She then rents a much more expensive apartment with a beautiful view of the city, taking on the lease before even seeing the place.

After two more sessions sleeping at Clara's house (during one of which the client burns her slightly with a cigarette as an act of sexual sadism and to test the strength of the sedative), Birdmann calls her; he has overdosed on drugs, and she visits him as he dies. She takes off her shirt and gets in bed with him, but she then simply cries and makes no effort to help him. At his funeral, Lucy talks to a former acquaintance and blandly asks him if he'll marry her, echoing her earlier casual banter with Birdmann. Unlike Birdmann, he believes her to be sincere in her request and is dumbfounded. He refuses, citing a previous failed relationship with her, his new one that is working well, and several character flaws he observes in Lucy. He tells her to "Fuck [herself] to death" and to try courtesy. Lucy raises her glass "to courtesy."

Shortly after, she is fired from her office job. Lucy then buys a small concealable camera at an electronics store, and tests it during one of her classes. She takes drugs with a coworker from her coffee shop job, goes night swimming with him, and wakes up naked in her apartment with him in the bed next to her. She is late for her assignment with Clara, who sends a car to retrieve her. She is hung over, and vomits on the way to the mansion.

Once Lucy arrives, she lies to Clara, saying she feels "fine," and then asks Clara if she can see what happens during the sessions while she is asleep. Clara refuses, saying it will put her clients at risk of blackmail. When Lucy is in the bed for the session, however, she awakes, and removes the small camera she had concealed in her mouth. Staggering under the onset of the effects of the sleep-inducing tea, she is able to place the camera on the side of the room, and then returns to bed and falls asleep. The client is the first man again, but this time he also takes the tea for sleeping. Clara comes in and checks the man's pulse, showing no surprise when he cannot be awakened. She tries to wake Lucy and can't, eventually having to use mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Lucy wakes, and sees the naked man lying beside her, discovers that he is dead, and begins screaming.

The movie ends with the scene captured by the camera Lucy installed: the old man and the girl both lying on the bed, sleeping.

Cast

• Emily Browning as Lucy
• Rachael Blake as Clara
• Ewen Leslie as Birdmann
• Michael Dorman as Cook
• Mirrah Foulkes as Sophie
• Henry Nixon as Mark
• Peter Carroll as Man 1
• Chris Haywood as Man 2
• Hugh Keays-Byrne as Man 3

Production

Writer and director Julia Leigh, primarily a novelist, said in an interview with Filmmaker Magazine that she initially wrote the film without the intention of directing it.^[2] In writing the script, Leigh drew from several literary inspirations— the Japanese novel The House of the Sleeping Beauties by Yasunari Kawabata; Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez;^[4] a story in The Bible in which King David seeks to spend the evening alongside sleeping virgins; and the eponymous fairytales by Charles Perrault and The Brothers Grimm.^[2] She also noted the phenomenon of images of sleeping girls on the internet, presumably in somnophilia pornography.^[2]

The Sleeping Beauty script made the 2008 Black List of unproduced screenplays grabbing attention in Hollywood.^[5] In September 2009, the project was approved for funding from Screen Australia.^[1] In February 2010, it was announced that Emily Browning would play the lead role.^[6]Mia Wasikowska was originally cast as Lucy but dropped out in favour of playing the title role in the acclaimed version of Jane Eyre.^[7]

The film is notable for almost every scene being shot in one continuous take.

Reception

A trailer was released the same day the film was announced for the main Competition of the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film premiered at the festival on 12 May as the first Competition entry to be screened. An early morning press preview drew a mixed response but the official red carpet evening premiere received a prolonged standing ovation. All subsequent screenings at Cannes were packed and the film became one of the most talked about at the festival. Actor Jude Law, a Cannes jury member, revealed in a press conference that Sleeping Beauty had just missed out on one of the major awards.^{[8][9][10][11][12]}

In a review from the festival, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "Technically elegant with vehemence and control ... Emily Browning gives a fierce and powerful performance ... There is force and originality in Leigh's work".^[13] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "soporific in every sense", with the reservation: "Cannes audiences tend to be more forgiving in sections geared to emerging talent, like Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Outside the glare of Competition, even this pretentious exercise might have earned some appreciation for its rigorously cold aesthetic".^[14] Ian Buckwalter of NPR noted the film's "sexless and sterile" approach to its erotic material, going on to say, "This Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale; it's stark, dispassionate and noticeably short on happily ever afters."^[15]

Other reviewers have been intrigued: "Titillates, terrifies and haunts in equal measure", said Sukhdev Sandhu in the UK's The Telegraph.^[16] Fionnuala Halligan in Screen International wrote "Browning has gone the distance for her director and together, they have delivered something here that sometimes catches your breath."^[17] Salon's Andrew O'Hehir's found it "Gorgeous, opaque and disturbing."^[18] James Rocchi in Indiewire was also a fan, saying: "This is, in many ways, the kind of film you only get at a major festival, a hothouse flower, beautiful and delicate and yet surprisingly hardy and potentially toxic."^[19]

Critics who were less than impressed included James Berardinelli, of Reelviews, saying that "with an emotional temperature approaching absolute zero, Leigh finds it difficult to accomplish more than present a pastiche of artistic images signifying little."^[20] Likewise, Peter Debruge, of Variety, described the film as frustrating, "more tiresome than anything," and having "a distinctly first-draft feel."^[21]

Sleeping Beauty has been a film festival fixture, showing in over 50 major festivals worldwide in 2011–2012. Emily Browning won best actress awards at The Hamptons (USA) and Kiel (Germany). Julia Leigh received a Special Mention at the Stockholm International Film Festival 2011 for Sleeping Beauty - "For its ability to provoke and at the same time start an intellectual discussion about the things that it hurts to talk about".

In May 2012,on the anniversary of her Cannes debut,Julia Leigh received the top award of the Australian Directors' Guild, Best Direction in a Feature Film (Sleeping Beauty).

References

External links

• Official website
• Sleeping Beauty at the Internet Movie Database
• Sleeping Beauty at Rotten Tomatoes
• Sleeping Beauty at Metacritic