Deeply dull, pretentious art-house flick about a bored young girl who gets paid by fetishists to sleep, drugged, while they do anything they want to her except penetration. The debut feature from writer-director Julia Leigh, the movie never explores the full creepiness of what is happening, or even who is exploiting whom. It wants to be subversive and provocative but is more uncomfortable because of the amateur-ish acting that because of any explicit content. This is a movie without about as much understanding or interest in sexual fetish as Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT. And one can only be thankful that promising young actress, Mia Wasikowska, dropped out before this piss-poor indie hit besmirched her career.
SLEEPING BEAUTY played Cannes 2011 and opened in 2011 in Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Estonia, Hong Kong, the UK, Japan, France, the USA and Philippines. It opened earlier this year in Belgium, Singapore and Brazil and opens in the Netherlands on July 12th. It is available to rent and own.
