Australian dramas mostly fall into two broad camps - great crime-dramas, e.g. Animal Kingdom and Snowtown, or pretentious crap, e.g. Jindabyne. Sleeping Beauty is one of the latter, and it takes pretentious crap to levels of pretense and craptacularity usually only the French can muster.

No real point to the movie at all. Plot's initial idea is to shock the audience, and even that feels dull and drawn out, reminding me of Eyes Wide Shut. After that it just drifts around and goes nowhere.

Performances are generally unconvincing and dull, in keeping with the plot. Emily Browning was miscast in the lead role (though every other actress out there should be thanking their lucky stars that they don't have this on their CV).

Avoid at all costs. It will save you nearly two hours of your life.

In a scene towards the climax of the film, we see Lucy (Emily Browning),taking a lesson at university where the lecturer seems to be analyzing a game of chess. The question is proposed, asking why would someone make a move securing their defeat? This seems to be relevant for Browning's character throughout this very interesting tale of sexual depravity and the detachment of the female body to the masculine libido. Lucy works her way through education, financing her way with various menial jobs. She begins a job with an exclusive, and very clandestine operation, beginning simply with silver service waitressing in "risque" negligee. This of course progresses into a more dangerous level, when she is offered a very well-paid gig involved a drugging so that she may sleep whilst a client does what he wishes. Although, as promised in Lucy's first interview, "Your vagina will not be penetrated". From first time director Julia Leigh, the film has various similarities to Luis Bunuel's excellent Belle de Jour (1967),mainly in it's depiction of a strong female character who wishes to delve into a dangerous world of male desires. However, unlike Bunuel's film, Leigh has created a character in Lucy, who seems utterly detached from the people around her. She does visit Birdman (Ewne Leslie),who seems to be agoraphobic, but this is not elaborated on. She seems also very willing to do things without questioning. In one scene she is offered a pill after her work in a restaurant, she asks what it is, but takes it without having had an answer. The film is self-consciously European in it's atmosphere and pace. The handling of the subject matter is never gratuitous, neither does it spoon feed a message of masochistic perversity. Browning is excellently vacuous in the role, gently drifting from situation to situation with not a question or any adversity. The film is beautiful to look at (and I don't just mean the alabaster figure of the nude Browning),it's pallet of autumnal colours adding extra references to 1970's European cinema. There is no doubt that this film will divide viewers. Dirty old men ogling over a sleeping, naked 22 year old, will make for uncomfortable viewing for some, but I felt that this was not exploitational in it's depiction. We also never really see what these old men do in the time they are given with the "sleeping beauty". All we get is an almost confessional from one of the customers. After being advised by Clara (Rachel Blake) that there is no penetration, the client states: "The only way I can get a hard-on, is if I take 12 Viagra and get a beautiful lady to shove her fingers up my arse". The films conclusion is haunting, beautifully realised and ambiguous. It certainly raises more questions than it answers about this detached and seemingly passive female character in a world of strange male desire. A film that will resonate in your mind some time after it has finished.

The nihilist college girl Lucy (Emily Browning) has a dysfunctional family and lives together with her sister and brother-in-law. She is financially supported by three minor jobs: she is submitted to a weird experiment in a laboratory; she cleans a restaurant; and she takes photocopies in an office. She finds an advertisement in the newspaper offering a job in a fancy brothel and paying US$ 250.00 per hour. The madam Clara (Rachael Blake) hires her and she is assigned to serve drinks to wealthy clients on a dinner table wearing lingerie. Then Clara drugs her and she spends the night sleeping naked with impotent man that can do any kinkiness with her body but penetration.

"Sleeping Beauty" is a pointless, boring, pretentious and unpleasant garbage. Everything is wrong in this movie: Emily Browning can be anything but a beauty; every character is unpleasant; there is no explanation, moral or whatever to explain the self-destructive behavior of Lucy. The film does not even shock the audience since it is not bold or bizarre enough in the sex scenes. I thought that she was doing all of that just for money but she inexplicably burns a one hundred-dollar bill. But maybe the worst is that this crap was written and directed by a woman. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Beleza Adormecida" ("Sleepy Beauty")