Sleeping Beauty aspires to create a... haunted disconnect between Lucy's presentation and her subjectivity. Yet Leigh isn't able to muster a cinematic equivalent of a first-person narration that would convey Lucy's interiority to the viewer.

| Jul 9, 2018

Even if the film's final chapter seems far too on point, if not glib, the filmmaker continues to mine complicated psychological terrain with a clear-eyed stringency.

| Jul 1, 2013

She spends much of the movie baring her fascinatingly underdeveloped body; her vagina is her temple. There's no graphic sex, but its intimations are anything but sexy.

| Jun 20, 2013

It is also, sadly, frustratingly, disappointingly and, most importantly, relentlessly boring.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 27, 2012

[An] arty exploitation pic passed off as a feminist parable...

| Original Score: C | Jan 12, 2012

A fascinating, erotically charged mystery.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 9, 2011

Leigh, impressively for a first-time filmmaker, has a distinct and confident approach.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 9, 2011

Eros snores.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 9, 2011

It's a story told in quiet rooms and hushed voices - except for one devastating scream near the end - and it's ultimately a horror story, though one completely free of blood and gore.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 8, 2011

Though Julia Leigh's surprisingly dull debut is meant to present the mysteries of a troubled young woman, you're more likely to wonder why its star, Emily Browning, is drawn to such demeaning roles.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 4, 2011

Browning is tiny and frighteningly exposed in these scenes, but Leigh turns the tables: In the moment of her greatest vulnerability, Lucy exercises a curious power over the Johns who pay for her time.

| Dec 2, 2011

The result can feel untouchable and impenetrable, but it also serves to make its visceral moments that much more affecting. This Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale; it's stark, dispassionate and noticeably short on happily ever afters.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 2, 2011

I'm not, finally, sure what Leigh is saying - but she is a filmmaker with a voice.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 2, 2011

There is a measure of soft-core titillation in this, for sure, but Ms. Leigh observes Lucy's body and what happens to it with a dreamy detachment that is seductive and unnerving in equal measure.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 1, 2011

The picture is clinical in its approach and its technique, yet it leaves so many questions unanswered - it's straightforward in a vague, maddening way. It's also strangely, obliquely compelling.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Dec 1, 2011

There's an allegorical quality to what Leigh's up to here.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 1, 2011

Precisely staged but maddeningly obtuse, "Sleeping Beauty" is an artful exercise in pointlessness.

| Nov 30, 2011

It's not much fun watching an Australian director whose small goal in life is to ape French provocateur Catherine Breillat. There's not much thrill in watching Ms. Browning, who is so anesthetized she seems to be dreaming whether she's asleep or awake.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 30, 2011

The very beautiful and brave young actor Emily Browning slugs us with another sucker punch in the disturbing debut feature from Australian novelist Julia Leigh.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 29, 2011

Sharp and precise as its tableaux might be ... Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the brain, and its tenuous provocations fizzle out quickly.

| Nov 29, 2011