Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty is one of those films that, while being erotic, tries to make you feel guilty about being turned on. Now, I admit that my sexual interests are pretty fucking catholic (small "c" catholic, natch). I've read some reviews that say this film isn't erotic at all, but if you're going to make a film with Emily Browning spending half of the film naked, you're going to turn me on.

Director and screenwriter Julia Leigh, I think, has made a film about female objectification. But, let's face it, almost every movie ever made that has women in it is about female objectification. In this one, Browning plays a college student who is hard up for money. She has several odd jobs, including doing some hooking. We do see her attend college classes, so it's hard to know when she has time to sleep.

She answers an ad in the student paper and takes a job serving rich geezers while wearing lingerie. She's new, so she doesn't show everything, although the other girls wear bizarre outfits that expose their breasts, and some squat immobile, their asses in the air, like pieces of furniture. Her new boss, the sophisticated Rachel Blake, tells her there is a great chance for promotion, and that she will never be penetrated. "Your vagina is your temple," she tells Browning.

She ends up doing gigs where she is drugged and lays on a bed while some old goat does who knows what to her. They are told not to penetrate her, but we really don't know what they're doing. One dignified old gent, after summarizing a short story while Blake patiently listens, climbs into bed with her. Another calls her a bitch and gives her a cigarette burn behind the ear. A third carries her as if he's rescuing her from drowning, but then drops her.

I have heard of men having a fetish for sleeping women, and there are videos that feature it, with actresses pretending to be asleep while men fiddle with them. But I don't think that's there's enough men that would spend that much money to make it a viable business. So what Leigh has done is not make something realistic buy metaphorical--men want their women docile and silent. That seems like an awfully angry attitude to have, especially in 2010, when this film was made. Intimacy with a woman who can not respond is only one tick away from necrophilia--at least in this case the body is warm and breathing. This is a creepy film, but not a particularly profound one.

I have to give Browning credit--it's a brave performance, what with being tossed around by naked old men. She doesn't have much of a character to play. We can assume she hates herself, but there's not much else to go on--she has roommates who hate her, and an unseen alcoholic mother, but otherwise she's an enigma. She has a relationship of some kind with a sickly man, but the full nature of that relationship is inscrutable.

Sleeping Beauty would make for a good discussion in a women's studies course, but is not all that interesting to watch, except for those who have fantasies about pixie-ish Australian redheads.