Sleeping Beauty (2011)
Average Rating: 5.2/10
Reviews Counted: 85
Fresh: 42 | Rotten: 43
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 5.5/10
Critic Reviews: 21
Fresh: 10 | Rotten: 11
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 64,661
My Rating
Movie Info
Lucy (Emily Browning) is a young university student possessed by a kind of radical passivity. She lets a flip of a coin decide the outcome of a random sexual encounter and she displays an uncomplaining patience when facing the repetitions of her various menial jobs that fund her studies. One day she answers an ad in the student newspaper and interviews for a job to be a lingerie waitress. But she is secretly being initiated into a world of strange new work; one where she will have to give into
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Cast
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Emily Browning
Lucy -
Rachael Blake
Clara -
Ewen Leslie
Birdmann -
Peter Carroll
l'homme brise, Man 1 -
Chris Haywood
Man 2 -
Hugh Keays-Byrne
Man 3 -
-
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Sleeping Beauty Trailer & Photos
All Critics (85) | Top Critics (21) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (43)
[An] arty exploitation pic passed off as a feminist parable...
Top CriticA fascinating, erotically charged mystery.
Leigh, impressively for a first-time filmmaker, has a distinct and confident approach.
Eros snores.
It's a story told in quiet rooms and hushed voices - except for one devastating scream near the end - and it's ultimately a horror story, though one completely free of blood and gore.
Though Julia Leigh's surprisingly dull debut is meant to present the mysteries of a troubled young woman, you're more likely to wonder why its star, Emily Browning, is drawn to such demeaning roles.
Juggling moments of pitch black humour and disturbingly tense scenes of abuse, Sleeping Beauty has a queasy, mismatched tone that underscores an uneven, elliptical movie.
Comically pretentious and unreasonably slow...
Sleeping Beauty is an atmospheric gem which intrigues and delivers in almost every scene
The film's stifled sexual politics seem both non-feminist and critical of a 21st-century pornographic world, where all of us are stuck in our cubicles of detached, narcissistic desire.
I could see it inspiring interesting discussions afterward, but there is the matter of having to sit through it first.
This is a strange film that gets into issues of the meaning of sex, of male fantasy, even of feminism.
Though it seems appropriate to make "Sleeping Beauty" as empty, enervating and dull as its main character, it only serves to underscore the lack of entertainment or insight.
The film deals with the topic of sexual taboos in a transgressive manner that bends your brain. The whole enterprise may even be fraudulent.
Leigh strikes an observational, artful tone that builds to an emotional climax as fittingly yet frustratingly enigmatic as anything that's come before.
Brrrr. This study of a young girl's descent into a most rarefied form of whoring is as coldly clinical as it is annoyingly pretentious.
Browning is tiny and frighteningly exposed in these scenes, but Leigh turns the tables: In the moment of her greatest vulnerability, Lucy exercises a curious power over the Johns who pay for her time.
Exploring enduring appeal to men,. . .the banality of human nature. . .may be a letdown, especially about elderly males, but is disturbingly universal as a modern fairy tale.
Creepy erotic drama about sedated girls has little meaning.
Audience Reviews for Sleeping Beauty
Total waste of time. It will more likely turn you into a sleeping beauty instead..The debut feature film by novelist Julia Leigh is anything but artistic, which is a goal that she obviously set out to achieve. It was the lack of emotion throughout the film which ultimately made it all style without any substance. As much as I wanted to like the film, it was guilty of pretentious overload. Some people might still get something out of the movie its images or will read deeper into some of the movie its moments but personally I got very little out of this movie. It was a very empty movie story-wise and an emotionally bland one, that by the end left nothing more than a very redundant impression on me.
Lucy is a university student who is working a number of jobs. She volunteers at a research lab, works at a coffee shop, and as a photocopy cerk in an office. She responds to an advertisement and embarks on an erotic freelance job in which she is required to sleep in bed alongside paying customers.
Super Reviewer
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- Lucy: I love drinking, I'm really good at it.
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- Lucy: Fear of death is the biggest hoax.
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- Clara: Such a sleep works wonders.
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- Clara: Your vagina will not be penetrated. Your vagina will be a temple.
- Lucy: My vagina is not a temple.
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