Review of Sleeping Beauty (2011) by Seema S — 13 Feb 2012

This is a strange, borderline exploitation movie that seems to be saying something meaningful, but doesn't quite deliver on the promise. Lucy (Emily Browning) appears to be a hard up student seeking quick ways of making fast money, and gets herself involved in fetish prostitution. She is drugged & 'used' by clients (though penetration is not allowed), waking up hours later not knowing what has been done to her. There are other issues going on in her life, an alcoholic mother & male friend, house-mates hounding her for rent & various jobs & university pulling her one way or the other. In the end one is not quite sure why she needs the money through prostituting herself - self-loathing? Empowerment? Boredom? Desperately seeking some form of excitement in life?

Either way, there are plenty of questions unanswered. Emily Browning drifts through this movie with an ethereal detachment. There's a sense of feeling sorry for her, but in the end we are not so sure. In one scene she even burns some of the money she is earning, so things are not quite 'poor girl needs to pay the rent'. Laid out asleep on the bed she looks like Ophelia of Pre-Raphaelite Millais. Sleeping Beauty hints at bigger ideas, but the delivery of Emily Browning has such an air of coldness & detachment that we are never going to see much beyond the surface nudity and creepy fetishism.