Sleeping Beauty

Saturated with sex, with a strong feminist reading, this is a movie that strays far from the fairy tale narrative of its titular predecessor. This is a story of an Australian university student, Lucy, who turns to prostitution in order to earn some extra money. However, the type of work she falls into, the “sleeping beauty” service, proves to be more psychologically intriguing than sexually fulfilling. First time director Julia Leigh uses her debut project in order to explore the relationship between the user and the used. Lucy is used, most obviously, by a mysterious league of rich men (just as sinister as it sounds) who drug her into a comatose sleep and spend the night with her with only one rule: they are not allowed to penetrate her. Lucy is also used up at the other jobs she tries to hold down: waitress, office girl, and occasional lab rat. But Lucy is also capable of using: her painfully platonic relationship with school friend Birdman, and her experimentation with drugs. What comes across scene after scene, disjointed as they may seem in some cases, is that people use something or they use each other.

This movie is ironically full of penetration, despite its own rules. The definite success of Sleeping Beauty is how it creates an entire atmosphere of penetration. The beautiful Victorian interiors bear down heavily on pale, naïve Lucy. The palette of the movie is washed with colors that accentuate the “silver service” girl’s hair, eyes, and even lip colour (in a disturbing exchange with a Madame). The disturbing sex scenes command us to watch, even if we might want to turn away. Sleeping Beauty penetrates the viewer because it cannot penetrate its own heroine.

This is a film that confronts sexuality as a beast, even a monster. Cringe inducing is its intention, but it doesn’t come without intent. Leigh wants us to see using in its most surreal, and yet logical conclusion: do we even care who we're being fucked by or who’s fucking us anymore? It seems though that Lucy does, and in the final scene of the film we see her set up a camera in the room where she sleeps away nights with these men. The final shot of the film is confusing, but certainly open for a good bit of discussion as you walk out of the screening. We’re not left wondering if there is a “happily ever after” but is there an “after” at all for Lucy, terrified of the consequences of what has or possibly hasn’t happened to her.

http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/York_Picturehouse/

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