Sleeping Beauty

Australia

Very creepy, disturbing film. A pretty college-age woman who seems to be lost and directionless gets involved with a high-roller quasi-prostitution ring. She serves as a waitress wearing revealing negligees and eventually agrees to a scheme where she is given a sleeping potion and placed in a bedroom where men come in and do whatever they like with her body while she is comatose.

We have no backstory on her which makes the scenario universal rather than personal. It's pretty easy to concoct ideas for which this story serves as metaphor. The men who partake in her services are rich...some are cruel or impotent.

Major kudos to Emily Browning, the actress who played the lead. She had to perform various degrading acts and still create a character who we the audience cared about even though we learn almost nothing about her. Several times she visits a male friend who is hurting in some way but their relationship is never explained. She encounters a former swain at a party who despises her now after she asks him to marry her. Who is this girl? What is her problem?

The whole film uses elegant locations, elegant clothes, elegant lighting, food. Class issues abound.

I wonder if this kind of service exists and, if not, if this film will help create it? Troubling stuff indeed.

7