Sleeping Beauty

Each year I try to see at least one Aussie film at the Sydney Film Festival. This year I chose this film which had a very mixed reaction recently at the Cannes Film Festival.

If there was ever a film that could be considered a work of art then this is it. Much like a work of art it is open to interpretation and your opinion of it is a personal thing. I'm very open minded about subjects that most films explore however I think this film explores ones which are just plain weird. I think the problem is that you can tell this is writer/director Julia Leigh's first film. I found the script to be very under developed. Most of the dialogue was very badly written and seemed amateurish. Julia is however a good visual director and composes scenes with quite an interesting style and in an artistic manner. It would have been better if maybe Julia got more advice or at least another writer to write her dialogue. There is also the supporting characters in the film. They are not explored very well and we are not given much information on who they are and their relationship to Lucy. I got the feeling that it was one of those films with a lot of symbolism that you may need several viewings to fully interpret. The is also no musical score which makes it even more harder to interpret. Music at least would give you some expectation on how to feel in a scene. But maybe that was Julia's intention.

Emily Browning recently starred in 'Sucker Punch'. This film is a more art house version of that. But instead of dancing to earn her pay she has to sleep. I think she is a very brave actress to do a film like this considering some of the things her character has to do. This is especially true in the sleeping scenes where she has to pretend to be in a very deep sleep. It is certainly a very revealing role in more ways than one. The support cast we do not get much from. Rachel Blake play the blandness of her character very well. Ewen Leslie is good as a friend of Lucy and Michael Dorman seems to be the only one to show much emotion as a character.

I'm not sure if I can recommend this film or who to recommend it to. While I appreciate it as a work of art it was not much to my liking. More work was needed on the script too.