Dir. Julia Leigh
A young university student sell herself into a mysterious hidden world of unspoken desires.
MY TAKE
Sleeping Beauty by first-time writer/director Julia Leigh is the very un-Disney-like story of a carefree girl who prostitutes herself out in unusual ways. First as a lab rat, and later as an unconscious sex toy for rich men, Emily Browning’s striking doll-like features seem to be enough reason for every person she meets to treat her like an object. The film is art directed to perfection, but that same plastic-wrapped detachment to character and story results in sometimes brutally pristine images that don’t leave a mark. What begins like Eyes Wide Shut and the purports to enter The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo territory is cut short before it’s able to make a larger point or transform any of it’s characters.
film500 
I find this plot so repulsive. Couldn’t even get past the trailer.
The premise is certainly shocking, but the film isn’t advertising this as a viable career option. I always try to gauge the film by how the filmmaker treats the subject material (because the Holocaust is repulsive, for example, but that’s no reason not to explore it through film). Ultimately it’s all about how the material treated, which in this case, is fairly effective…