Review of Sleeping Beauty (2011) by Benjamin S — 25 Oct 2011

As frustrating as it is pretentious, yet Sleeping Beauty has much to be admired from its icy almost catatonic deliberately paced narrative to its fearless and breakthrough performance by Emily Browning who dares to take her career in a different direction and risks more than most actresses her age would.

This lies somewhere between a feminist parable and a seemingly erotic melodrama that is handled as a cautionary tale and an ending that whimpers rather than crashes. Certainly not a film for everyone but one that will divide viewers.

Writer-director Julia Leigh makes a grand directional debut and has a unique voice of her own, with perhaps a few hints of a modern day Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut). Not without it's faults it has moments of repetition but conjures up echoes of French cinema while working as a benchmark for more daring Australian cinema that has emerged in the last decade (i.

E The Monkey's Mask (2000), Alexandria's Project (2003) and The Book of Revelation (2006).