Movie Name:- Sleeping Beauty
Release Date:- 2 December 2011
Directed By:- Julia Leigh
Produced By:- Jessica Brentnall, Timothy White, Sasha Burrows, Jamie Hilton
Category / Genres:- Drama
Run Time:- 104 Minutes
IMDB Rating:- 5.5
Star Cast:- Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Bridgette Barrett, Hannah Bella Bowden, Les Chantery, Benita Collings, Michael Dorman, Eden Falk, Anni Finsterer, Mirrah Foulkes, James Fraser,
OR 
Sleeping Beauty Movie Plot:- Sleeping Beauty is an Australian movie that treats the subject of prostitution in a very different way. Presenting nudity as an art, it brings to you the story of Lucy, who happens to be a young and fierce student. Emily Browning plays the role and does it with style and grace, so much so, that her performances can be considered among the very best that there have ever been. Lucy is shown working part time to fulfill her money requirements. She volunteers for medical experiments and also goes for occasional prostitution. Prostitution leads her to a ‘niche sex industry.’ The concept of this industry is that old, tuxedo donning gentlemen, pay young women to wait for them in their beds almost naked and in a drugged state. The deal is that these elderly people can do whatever they wish to with these women except for going for that customary orgasm. When you watch Sleeping Beauty online, you see that Lucy does not do all of it due to sheer lack of monetary resources, she is on a self punishment sort of a thing, where her troubled past plays the main reason behind her actions. Author Julia Leigh turns director with this movie, which makes for a pretty fine debut. This movie sends some pretty strong signals to the women in the sex industry. It is a movie that can be seen with an open mind as it is a project, which is open to interpretations. How this movie turns out for you depends on how you take it. Its emotional seriousness is what can be labeled as the base on which it stands. A powerful movie made with fine skill and backed by remarkable performances. Watch it for its bold yet different approach to the subject of prostitution.
Sleeping Beauty Movie Review:- The depiction of human nature in this film is not completely miserable, but it's pretty miserable. Emily Browning plays the largely inscrutable Lisa, a university student in Sydney already exhibiting degrees of nihilistic behaviour before she signs on as a silver service lingerie waitress in a very weird, hoity-toity brothel of sorts. She quickly 'graduates' to the position of Sleeping Beauty in which, while voluntarily drugged and asleep, she becomes a sexual prop for grey-haired men rich enough to pay for the service. While asleep, she sees and knows nothing of what happens, but the audience of this film sees plenty. What is seen and heard is more disturbing than it is visually explicit, excepting the nudity of all involved, especially Browning's.
The question is - what is all this about? It is beautifully designed and photographed in still, square-on Kubrick style, with minimal editing and music. There are degrees of suspense and disturbance, mystery and eroticism, but there isn't much of a vector for any of these elements. The characters are variously arch and obnoxious, cold, stupid, reckless and unkind. We know little about any of them, and most of what we do learn doesn't make much sense. Bizarrely, the kindest person in the film seems to be the madam of the brothel, played by a magnificently still Rachael Blake.
I wondered, while watching Sleeping Beauty, how it was going to end itself. The final scene is pretty unsatisfying, given that the resolution depends on Lisa eventually seeking to find out what has been going on during her sleeps - something the audience doesn't just know already, but has watched at length as fact. And there is a twist which potentially confuses the denouement.
There is no doubting that this film is an experience and finely made, but there's a strain of dumb misery and pessimism at work here along the lines of Catherine Breillat and Michael Haneke. Everybody is hopeless and unkind, they don't know what they want, they can't evolve, they don't want to evolve. Lisa seems interested in a promiscuous brand of self-destruction for reasons the audience basically has to invent. The whole film also teeters on the edge of being one of those pieces where every single man is depicted as being a sex-enslaved scumbag. What you're left with is an aesthetically interesting film with a strong sensibility, but which is wearily negative about everything, and whose ending is also a letdown on the film's own terms.
Release Date:- 2 December 2011
Directed By:- Julia Leigh
Produced By:- Jessica Brentnall, Timothy White, Sasha Burrows, Jamie Hilton
Category / Genres:- Drama
Run Time:- 104 Minutes
IMDB Rating:- 5.5
Star Cast:- Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Bridgette Barrett, Hannah Bella Bowden, Les Chantery, Benita Collings, Michael Dorman, Eden Falk, Anni Finsterer, Mirrah Foulkes, James Fraser,
OR Sleeping Beauty Movie Plot:- Sleeping Beauty is an Australian movie that treats the subject of prostitution in a very different way. Presenting nudity as an art, it brings to you the story of Lucy, who happens to be a young and fierce student. Emily Browning plays the role and does it with style and grace, so much so, that her performances can be considered among the very best that there have ever been. Lucy is shown working part time to fulfill her money requirements. She volunteers for medical experiments and also goes for occasional prostitution. Prostitution leads her to a ‘niche sex industry.’ The concept of this industry is that old, tuxedo donning gentlemen, pay young women to wait for them in their beds almost naked and in a drugged state. The deal is that these elderly people can do whatever they wish to with these women except for going for that customary orgasm. When you watch Sleeping Beauty online, you see that Lucy does not do all of it due to sheer lack of monetary resources, she is on a self punishment sort of a thing, where her troubled past plays the main reason behind her actions. Author Julia Leigh turns director with this movie, which makes for a pretty fine debut. This movie sends some pretty strong signals to the women in the sex industry. It is a movie that can be seen with an open mind as it is a project, which is open to interpretations. How this movie turns out for you depends on how you take it. Its emotional seriousness is what can be labeled as the base on which it stands. A powerful movie made with fine skill and backed by remarkable performances. Watch it for its bold yet different approach to the subject of prostitution.
Sleeping Beauty Movie Review:- The depiction of human nature in this film is not completely miserable, but it's pretty miserable. Emily Browning plays the largely inscrutable Lisa, a university student in Sydney already exhibiting degrees of nihilistic behaviour before she signs on as a silver service lingerie waitress in a very weird, hoity-toity brothel of sorts. She quickly 'graduates' to the position of Sleeping Beauty in which, while voluntarily drugged and asleep, she becomes a sexual prop for grey-haired men rich enough to pay for the service. While asleep, she sees and knows nothing of what happens, but the audience of this film sees plenty. What is seen and heard is more disturbing than it is visually explicit, excepting the nudity of all involved, especially Browning's.
The question is - what is all this about? It is beautifully designed and photographed in still, square-on Kubrick style, with minimal editing and music. There are degrees of suspense and disturbance, mystery and eroticism, but there isn't much of a vector for any of these elements. The characters are variously arch and obnoxious, cold, stupid, reckless and unkind. We know little about any of them, and most of what we do learn doesn't make much sense. Bizarrely, the kindest person in the film seems to be the madam of the brothel, played by a magnificently still Rachael Blake.
I wondered, while watching Sleeping Beauty, how it was going to end itself. The final scene is pretty unsatisfying, given that the resolution depends on Lisa eventually seeking to find out what has been going on during her sleeps - something the audience doesn't just know already, but has watched at length as fact. And there is a twist which potentially confuses the denouement.
There is no doubting that this film is an experience and finely made, but there's a strain of dumb misery and pessimism at work here along the lines of Catherine Breillat and Michael Haneke. Everybody is hopeless and unkind, they don't know what they want, they can't evolve, they don't want to evolve. Lisa seems interested in a promiscuous brand of self-destruction for reasons the audience basically has to invent. The whole film also teeters on the edge of being one of those pieces where every single man is depicted as being a sex-enslaved scumbag. What you're left with is an aesthetically interesting film with a strong sensibility, but which is wearily negative about everything, and whose ending is also a letdown on the film's own terms.
