Sydney Film Festival 2011 - Sleeping Beauty - Film Review

Still Shot: Emily Browning in  'Sleeping Beauty"

The Sydney Film Festival is on again. One of the more PR promoted films is reviewed below...

The plot is described as an "unsettling erotic fairytale" and the film was selected for Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. But what was the all hype about with this film ? Emily Browning plays Lucy, a university student working numerous self-effacing jobs such as waitressing, after-hours office support and generally the jobs students do. Described in character as ".. socially isolated from her housemates and fellow students..." Lucy displays little genuine interest in them, skips her rent and spends her limited free time ministering to the peculiar desires of her morbidly depressed and apparently best 'friend' Birdmann (played by Ewen Leslie and of whom we learn almost nothing even after he apparently commits suicide). Her strong-willed drift towards recreational drug indulgent oblivion is anchored only by her need for money so she signs up with an exclusive silver service lingerie club run by the elegant but unexplained Clara (Rachael Blake), whose poise and controlling demeanor is a stark contrast with the almost monosyllabic, vacuous Lucy.

The film lacks a strong story line, effective storytelling dialogue and drifts almost aimlesslessy along its length punctuated by regular nude scenes of Lucy (Emily Browning), almost gratuitious and irrelevent in their frequency. The film actually has no ending but concludes at a dramatic scene, so the audience is left with nothing in terms of character and plot resolution or even a sense of options. A fairytale story this is not. Lucy as a central character is someone for whom the audience can find little sympathy. Narcissistic, solely inwardly focussed and living a deceptive existence she represesents in one way everything which is attributed to Generation Y.