In a recent meditation on long, quiet films, In Defense Of Slow And Boring, New York Times chief film critic Manohla Dargis said, "Thinking is boring, of course (all that silence), which is why so many industrially made movies work so hard to entertain you."
I kept thinking (ho ho) of that piece while struggling through Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty: is this film making me think because it is "boring", and composed of languorous shots and quiet scenes of reflection that inspire deep emotional questioning? Or is it making me think - of something, anything - because it is boring?
The latter turns out to be the case as the film blindly grasps at a poetic, even existential, profundity that ultimately eludes it.
We first meet university student Lucy (Emily Browning) as she has an endoscopy at a medical research facility; she gives the doctor her "autograph", pockets the little yellow envelope of cash, and then gags quietly as the camera is fed down her throat.
Later that night, she snorts coke at a bar (nicking the rolled up $100 note; "Thanks") and lets a coin toss dictate her sexual activities for the night: sleeping with a rather unpleasant older man.
In between these activities, she regularly visits the bedsit apartment of a local alcoholic, known only as Birdman (Ewen Leslie), serving him muesli drenched in vodka. It's the closest thing she has to a functional human relationship: her housemates are bristly, her bosses resentful, her fellow students mere blurs in the background.
Eventually, feeling the pinch of student chic, she answers an ad in the student paper; it's clear from her one-sided phone conversation - "Slim... Pert..." - that the job is in the adult services industry.
Her new boss is Claire (Rachael Blake), who hires her as a silver service lingerie waitress. Lucy is instructed by a coworker to paint her lips the same colour as her labia.
(It's that sort of guffaw-inducing erotic nonsense that colours much of Sleeping Beauty with an unmistakable tang of pretension. As sullen models in Rudi Gernreich-esque lingerie drift around an ornate room full of old men drinking brandy, you may - as I did - feel as though you are trapped in a waking nightmare, incepted by a Peter Greenaway obsessive with an Agent Provocateur loyalty card.)
From there, Lucy - now taking the professional name of Sara - is promoted: she'll take a sleeping draught and be out cold for eight hours while paying customers have their way with her in whatever manner they desire that doesn't involve penetration.
The interactions range from perplexing to disturbing; Lucy's reaction to it all is unclear; everybody's motivations are murky. That's not because it's the sort of film that, say, "refuses to give you easy answers", but rather that it's a film that refuses to give you anything at all.
The only character with any real depth is Birdman, who is slowly drinking himself to death. Leigh paints Birdman in a way that manages to avoid romanticising alcoholism, as so many films do: his flat is grubby and cold, and he is a pathetic character; he recalls a time he wanted to kiss Lucy but didn't because his tongue had "the fur". He watches Oprah and nature documentaries while pickling himself with cheap vodka.
It's Browning's naturally engaging look and presence that makes the film watchable, since as Lucy drifts through her life, only occasionally experiencing catharsis through the death of others, she's a passive protagonist. It's my-first-screenplay stuff.
You could, of course, theorise that Leigh is making a statement about how active (and powerful) passivity can be, sexually, but Lucy is not really a submissive in the true sense; she's just a cipher.
Having done the rounds in script form a year or so ago, Sleeping Beauty did feel unique, but that sparseness on the page hasn't translated cinematically; Sleeping Beauty's limp onscreen quality suggests it might have made a better novella.
It's that air of pretension - an interminable to-camera monologue by Peter Carroll, like some sort of fringe theatre endurance test, is a low point - that finally poisons the film.
And pretension brings on a boredom so deep that - like Lucy's dreamless, deadened sleep - it sucks the thinking right out of you.
- two stars
Source: The Age
I kept thinking (ho ho) of that piece while struggling through Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty: is this film making me think because it is "boring", and composed of languorous shots and quiet scenes of reflection that inspire deep emotional questioning? Or is it making me think - of something, anything - because it is boring?
The latter turns out to be the case as the film blindly grasps at a poetic, even existential, profundity that ultimately eludes it.
We first meet university student Lucy (Emily Browning) as she has an endoscopy at a medical research facility; she gives the doctor her "autograph", pockets the little yellow envelope of cash, and then gags quietly as the camera is fed down her throat.
Later that night, she snorts coke at a bar (nicking the rolled up $100 note; "Thanks") and lets a coin toss dictate her sexual activities for the night: sleeping with a rather unpleasant older man.
In between these activities, she regularly visits the bedsit apartment of a local alcoholic, known only as Birdman (Ewen Leslie), serving him muesli drenched in vodka. It's the closest thing she has to a functional human relationship: her housemates are bristly, her bosses resentful, her fellow students mere blurs in the background.
Eventually, feeling the pinch of student chic, she answers an ad in the student paper; it's clear from her one-sided phone conversation - "Slim... Pert..." - that the job is in the adult services industry.
Her new boss is Claire (Rachael Blake), who hires her as a silver service lingerie waitress. Lucy is instructed by a coworker to paint her lips the same colour as her labia.
(It's that sort of guffaw-inducing erotic nonsense that colours much of Sleeping Beauty with an unmistakable tang of pretension. As sullen models in Rudi Gernreich-esque lingerie drift around an ornate room full of old men drinking brandy, you may - as I did - feel as though you are trapped in a waking nightmare, incepted by a Peter Greenaway obsessive with an Agent Provocateur loyalty card.)
From there, Lucy - now taking the professional name of Sara - is promoted: she'll take a sleeping draught and be out cold for eight hours while paying customers have their way with her in whatever manner they desire that doesn't involve penetration.
The interactions range from perplexing to disturbing; Lucy's reaction to it all is unclear; everybody's motivations are murky. That's not because it's the sort of film that, say, "refuses to give you easy answers", but rather that it's a film that refuses to give you anything at all.
The only character with any real depth is Birdman, who is slowly drinking himself to death. Leigh paints Birdman in a way that manages to avoid romanticising alcoholism, as so many films do: his flat is grubby and cold, and he is a pathetic character; he recalls a time he wanted to kiss Lucy but didn't because his tongue had "the fur". He watches Oprah and nature documentaries while pickling himself with cheap vodka.
It's Browning's naturally engaging look and presence that makes the film watchable, since as Lucy drifts through her life, only occasionally experiencing catharsis through the death of others, she's a passive protagonist. It's my-first-screenplay stuff.
You could, of course, theorise that Leigh is making a statement about how active (and powerful) passivity can be, sexually, but Lucy is not really a submissive in the true sense; she's just a cipher.
Having done the rounds in script form a year or so ago, Sleeping Beauty did feel unique, but that sparseness on the page hasn't translated cinematically; Sleeping Beauty's limp onscreen quality suggests it might have made a better novella.
It's that air of pretension - an interminable to-camera monologue by Peter Carroll, like some sort of fringe theatre endurance test, is a low point - that finally poisons the film.
And pretension brings on a boredom so deep that - like Lucy's dreamless, deadened sleep - it sucks the thinking right out of you.
- two stars
Source: The Age
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