Novelist Julia Leigh makes her directorial film debut with the hauntingly exquisite Sleeping Beauty (2011).  Starring newcomer Emily Browning as struggling college student Lucy, the film follows her nihilistic journey through the gloomy jungle of Sydney, Australia as she tries to make her way to rent money. Sparse finances, of course, are just the red herring impetus to Lucy’s dark quest that brings her into the sexual underworld down under.

Although dialogue is sparse, setting the minimalist tone for the entirety of the film, Julia Leigh flexes her authorial expertise in the visual medium just as deftly as pages are produced in a novel. Scenes feel deliberately vignette-like, sequencing several long, focused shots into each chapter we are privy to within Lucy’s life. Sleeping Beauty teeters tenaciously between a strict art house collage like Maya Deren’s influential Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and the raw, debased realism of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

While Lucy’s tale is laced with symbolism and nuance, the progression of events is played out in such hyper-scrutiny that the entirety of the film cannot be dismissed as artful allegory. Browning’s Lucy is stoic and wrought with a frustrating taste for self destruction.

Sleeping Beauty (2011)In the opening scene of Sleeping Beauty, the porcelain vision drudgingly sits down in a medical lab to swallow a balloon-and-tube contraption of sorts. The resulting gagging and apparent discomfort is all in exchange for a small manila envelope that can only presumably hold the cash that she so passively snips from the hands of her employers throughout the film. When her hostile roommates ask her for more rent, she sifts through the classifieds in search of further engagement. The newest job sets her on a path to become the namesake for Leigh’s stunning masterpiece- yet it feels sacrilegious to reveal anything further.

The texture of the film is driven by a slow, dreamily paced build-up that culminates in a twisted, sharply realistic ending that only pays off the viewer whose own blindfold has been tugged tight since the start. Emily Browning is riveting as Lucy, fluidly transforming from a fumbling student to an erotic waitress to an emotionally shrouded young woman who wittingly drugs herself each afternoon in exchange for a lump sum and total discretion.

But what is the cost? Who are the clients? And who is the victim? Answer these questions yourself when you purchase this enthralling and visually stunning escape on DVD today. From Movie Gazette Online, sweet dreams and even sweeter waking.