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Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 Australian erotic drama film that was written and directed by Julia Leigh. It is her debut as a director.[4] The film stars Emily Browning as a young university student who begins doing erotic freelancework in which she is required to sleep in bed alongside paying customers. The film is based on influences that include her own dream experiences, and the novels The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Nobel laureates Yasunari Kawabata and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, respectively.[5][6]
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! (2001). Sleeping Beauty was released in Australia on 23 June 2011. It premiered in US cinemas on 2 December 2011 on limited release. Overall critical reception of the film has been mixed, rising to some approval through June 2016, after circulation of the film on the festival circuit; audience reception, on the other hand, has been weak (less than a third of a sample of tens of thousands approving).
Lucy (Emily Browning) is a stoic, unemotional university student who has few friends and survives by working various short-term odd jobs. Her roommates dislike her, and she spends her time visiting Birdmann (Ewen Leslie), a male friend who is very attracted to her. While she does not return his sexual interest, Lucy enjoys Birdmann's company, and in his presence is the only time she is shown smiling or laughing. An old joke between the two is that Birdmann frequently asked Lucy to marry him; Lucy always says no.
In response to an ad for yet another short-term job, Lucy meets Clara (Rachael Blake), who runs a service in which attractive young women perform silver service while dressed in lingerie at a formal dinner party for male clients. Clara assures her that the men are not allowed to touch the women sexually, and Lucy agrees to try it. Clara inspects Lucy's body and names her "Sara" for the purpose of anonymity. At the dinner party, Lucy is the only girl dressed in white; the other women wear black lingerie that is much more revealing than Lucy's costume.
After 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 offers Lucy a new role wherein she will be voluntarily sedated and sleep naked while male clients lie beside her. They are permitted to caress and cuddle her, but penetration is not allowed. As Lucy lies unconscious, Clara leads in the man who hosted the first dinner party. After Clara reminds the man of the no-penetration rule, he strips and curls up beside Lucy.
After a few of these sessions, Lucy has enough money to move into a larger, more expensive apartment, where she lives alone. She receives a call from Birdmann, who has overdosed on painkillers. She goes to his house and finds him dying in his bed. Sobbing, she takes off her shirt and gets in bed with him, but he dies in her arms. At Birdmann's funeral, Lucy abruptly asks an old friend if he will marry her, in an echo of Birdmann's old playful banter. The friend, however, not understanding the reference, takes her seriously and, shocked, refuses her, citing a number of Lucy's personal problems as his reasons.
At her next assignment with Clara, Lucy asks 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. After being placed on the bed for the session, however, Lucy fights off the sleeping drugs long enough to hide a small camera in the room before returning to bed and succumbing to sleep. The client is once again the first man, but this time, he also drinks the tea with a much larger dose of the sleeping drug.
The following morning, Clara comes in and checks the man's pulse, showing no surprise when he cannot be awakened. She then tries to wake Lucy but is at first unable to do so, eventually having to use mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Lucy awakes and, discovering that the naked man lying beside her is dead, begins to scream hysterically—the first emotion she has shown throughout the film.
The film ends with the scene captured by the hidden camera: the dead old man and the sleeping girl both lying peacefully together in bed.
| Sleeping Beauty | |
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Theatrical poster
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| Directed by | Julia Leigh |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by | Julia Leigh |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Ben Frost |
| Cinematography | Geoffrey Simpson |
| Edited by | Nick Meyers |
Production
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date
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Running time
| 102 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $3 million[1] |
| Box office | |
