Sleeping Beauty (2012): Movie Review

If you thought this was going to be about the classical Sleeping Beauty we’ve known from Disney, you came to the wrong place. The term sleeping beauty used in this film refers to more of a service in which you ay to lay next to a sleeping woman without having sex with them. A drama film directed by Julia Leigh inspired by a novel called ”The House of the Sleeping Beauties” written by Yasunari Kawabata among other works such as : Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, somnophilia pornography, a story in the Bible, etc. Other than presenting this world of sensual and mysterious peace, it also shows in a way the hardships of being young and trying to sustain yourself. Let’s face it, sexual affairs bring a lot more money in a day than what you would normal earn in a week or a month. Everyone is willing to pay a price to spend the night with a beautiful person lying next to you and pleasing you as well in whichever way you desired, or am I wrong? Also it expresses how we as people sometimes hold things inside to appear stronger, we are emotionally asleep or detached from the world, that is until something happens that makes us wake up. That is all that composes the idea of a Sleeping Beauty.

I found this film when I was in high school, when I was at a friend’s house party and we decided to watch some Netflix to pass the time after we went to the pool. We saw the trailer but we weren’t truly convinced by it, so we didn’t watch it. Now I decided to see it on my own and see if it was any good. Personally not my cup of tea, it felt a little slow, I got lost sometimes with the dialogue using a bunch of metaphors, sometimes the main character confused me in the sense I didn’t know if to feel sympathy for her or not. That’s just me, if anyone cares to explain the movie more throughly to me, you’re more than welcome. Another thing is that in the real world the character seemed like any other simple person, very plain or sometimes just an easy girl you want to get into bed with. But in the world of the Sleeping Beauty she appears to be perfection, peace, purity, appearing to be all of those things that would be hard to find in the real world. Let’s not forget Emily Browning who played Violet Baudelaire from A Series of Unfortunate Events, suddenly seeing her in this character really felt like a big table turn but is to be expect when you go from child star to a young adult star.

The film begins introducing Lucy (Emily Browning) a young university student who works many odd jobs in oder to pay rent and sustain herself. These jobs consist of being a test subject at a lab, working at a coffee shop, working at an office printing copies, and offers herself as a sex partner at a high class bar to any man. She rents out a room in a house where her landlords don’t really like her and scold her about the rent. She spends some time with an old guy friend named Birdmann (Ewen Leslie), who has feelings for her though she does not return them she feels more comfortable with him most of the time. She answers a work ad and is contacted by a woman named Clara (Rachael Blake), who offers her a job at a freelance silver service where she must wear nothing but lingerie, will not be penetrated by any man, and she will call Lucy by the name Sarah. A chofer comes to pick her up, taking her to a fancy dinner party. She wears white lingerie, very modest unlike the other girls who wear a lot of dark make-up along with revealing dark lingerie.Their job is to basically serve the food and drinks at the dinner, and afterwards keep the guests company in the common room while they are drinking. Lucy gets paid, but for some reason she burns one of the dollar bills just for kicks and feels sleepy the next day at work. Later on Clara calls Lucy to offer her a different job, where she is taken to a country mansion and is given a tea to make her fall asleep. While Lucy is asleep she is naked in a bed, men pay Clara to go in and sleep next to Lucy but with the condition of no sexual penetration. With this job Lucy moves out from that room she was renting out and buys a much more expensive apartment to herself instead . Then one day she gets a call from her friend Birdmann who is suffering from an drug overdose, she goes to his apartment to comfort him but she really doesn’t try to save him she just lays next to him and cries; Spoiler he dies. She goes to his funeral and randomly asks an old if he could marry her, he gets confused and refuses saying he’s already happy with someone else and points out some of Lucy’s flaws. She is fired from her job at the office, buys a small camera and then goes skinny-dipping with a coworker from the coffee shop. The next day she is hung over and arrives late to an appointment with Clara. When Lucy gets there she asks Clara if there were cameras in the room she slept at and if she could see the videos of what happened while she slept but Clara refuses. Lucy places her small camera on a nightstand in the room before she goes to sleep. The man takes a large dose of the sleeping tea and the next day he doesn’t wake up, Clara tries to revive him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and when Lucy wakes up to see the dead man she screams.

This movie wasn’t a real favorite of mine as I may have previously mentioned, but like i always say ”Give things a chance”. It wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t amazing either. Though I did like the photography, how sometimes Lucy looked like a classical painting while in bed (like the Greeks or something like that), Emily Browning’s acting though not her character much cause she seemed a bit self centered like to absorbed into herself and we can tell this when Birdmann dies she doesn’t even try to stop it; also the way she’s just on her own and not truly close to anyone not even her mom who only calls her to ask for money. Lucy is pretty much alone in the world and this mysterious world is what makes her feel alive with purpose, cause in the outside world she’s just another girl trying to find money to live well.

It was first featured in the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and Emily Browning won an award for Best Actress at some point ( not really sure from what competition). It got very mixed reviews as well, so it depends on the person really.

Hope you enjoyed this brief review. I do apologize for how brief it was and maybe not so detailed, there were still things that confused me about this movie, don’t ask me what exactly its hard to put my finger on it. But if you have an open mind you can watch it and maybe share your opinion with me.