"Still Somewhat Sleeping" Sleeping Beauty (2010) Review

By Cliff Yung on March 28, 2015

as found on imdb.com

Try to begin with a “once upon a time” again. Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty attempts to bridge certain gaps between the fairy tale and modern society into a cinematic image. She falls short, very short, in terms of developing a successful film. Though, if you would like to read this film like a book, Sleeping Beauty may have some redeeming factors that would allow you to get through the movie. If it were actually a book, this is not a book; it is a movie. Her direction of the cinematics of the movie is tediously course imitation mimicking Michael Haneke’s well known film, Caché.

She hand lifts nearly exact scenes from Michael Haneke’s film. I will admit that the style of the long shot camera with minimal cuts makes many of the scenes between Haneke’s film Caché and Sleeping Beauty appear similar. The use of Haneke’s style in Leigh’s movie does not lead the viewer in any fixed direction in accordance to the subject matter of the movie. Her amateur cinematography focuses mainly on developing the camera work only within the scene, not considering how the camera work in the scene would affect the viewer in later scenes and the subject matter of her movie.

There are a few exceptions to the rule with her work on the sleeping female body. Her handling of bodies through her cinematography is decent at best. The similar long shot frames of each moment the female body, often sleeping, is similar but the application on to the human body within the context of each scene often rewrites the meaning behind the movie. Some of the handling of the female body has a mild antagonism to the viewer that I propose in a way similar to that of the disgust from the sexual moments in 50 Shades of Grey.

There is not too much of a plot in this movie. It mainly revolves around a struggling college girl who is trying to survive mainly by prostituting her body. The movie is definitely rated R, often showing nudity to prove her point. That point being a reproduction and critic on the male pornographic fantasies. The story often leaves gaps that the viewer has to fill in. The viewer is meant to fill in these active points of ambiguity and can be read in many different ways. The movie has too many active holes that primarily require an understanding of psychoanalytic feminist theory to fill in. Coupled with the terribly amateur use of a sizable technique, the movie has a tedious relationship in developing an active engagement between the psychoanalytic feminist undertones, the main character, Lucy, the plot, and the decent recreation of the female body in the movie.

“Male Fantasy” as found on e-filmblog.blogspot.com

I cannot actively recommend this movie to anyone and is one of the few movies that I regret watching. Though most of my negativity is focused around the amateur filmic elements, Sleeping Beauty may interest a viewer looking for a feminist experience. It undoubtedly takes cues from Angela Carter’s “The Sadeian Woman,” Cixous’s feminist critics, and many others. If you are ready to be more of a book reader than a movie watcher, this movie is for you.

Trailer: Sleeping Beauty (2010)

Follow Uloop

Apply to Write for Uloop News

Join the Uloop News Team

Discuss This Article

Back to Top

Log In

Contact Us

Upload An Image

Please select an image to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format
OR
Provide URL where image can be downloaded
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format

By clicking this button,
you agree to the terms of use

By clicking "Create Alert" I agree to the Uloop Terms of Use.

Image not available.

Add a Photo

Please select a photo to upload
Note: must be in .png, .gif or .jpg format