Filmfest Fridays is the best name I could come up with to describe my newly acquired love for Foreign and Independent film making because some stars in Hollywood had to start somewhere. So for the very first post, I chose a film that I had seen lingering around Netflix and it caught my attention based on the film’s poster. The film is called Sleeping Beauty and it stars Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) as Lucy, a college student who is trying everything she can to make a little money by working many odd jobs, but that desperation will soon lure her into a world she has never seen before. You see she answers an ad that leads her to become a sleeping beauty which is basically women who are paid to be fondled by men while they are sleeping. The film also stars Rachael Blake (Derailed) as Clara, Les Chantery (Pitch Black) as the driver, Michael Dorman (Killer Elite) as the cook, Eden Falk (The Great Gatsby) as Thomas, Mirrah Foulkes (Spider) as Sophie, Ewen Leslie (Dead Europe) as Birdmann, Sarah Snook (Not Suitable For Children) as Lucy’s Flatmate, and the film was written and directed by Julia Leigh (The Hunter).
The world in which Lucy has gotten her self into is very dark and it seems like a decent into personal madness as she digs herself deeper and deeper into a hole that she cannot escape from. There’s this one scene in the film that just confirms the sexual deviant nature of the film’s tone as she is walking around in lingerie serving a beverage to over-privileged members of Australian society. The look of sex is all around them and it’s like it’s not a big deal to them, but a part of the norm. There is Lucy whose decent into a personal hell is almost hard to watch as she digs herself deeper into that hole whether she’s at the bar looking to entertain men for money, pretending to be someone’s girlfriend for money, or the fact she becomes a sleeping beauty who is fondled by disgusting old men with too much money to their names. The tone of the film is very melancholy like where it just seems so gloomy throughout the whole film and the camera work was superb. This was Julia Leigh’s directorial debut and according to IMDB, this has been her only so far which is unfortunate. I am going to give the film an A for a final grade.
Moshpits And Movies 