Sleeping Beauty
Directed by Julia Leigh
FIRST RUN PREMIERE ENGAGEMENT Acclaimed Australian novelist Julia Leigh’s debut feature is a kinky and elegantly filmed portrait of a pretty college student named Lucy who takes a very strange job. Answering an ad for comely females, she ends up serving dinners to wealthy seniors while clad only in skimpy undergarments. When her skills are deemed worthy, she “graduates” into a more troublesome position where she is given a potion that puts her in a deep sleep while men are permitted to do what they like with her unconscious body. No penetration is allowed, but what does go on is disturbing and strange. Leigh films in long takes and the elegant settings provoke an erotic and sensually heightened mood. While provocatively riffing on the eponymous fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty also references classic works by Buñuel and Georges Bataille.
Though the tone is quiet and the pacing serenely unhurried, Sleeping Beauty is at times almost screamingly funny, a pointed, deadpan surrealist sex farce that Luis Buñuel might have admired. —A.O. Scott, New York Times
I found Sleeping Beauty gorgeous, opaque and disturbing in roughly equal portions, but it was a riveting experience all the way through. —Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
Australia 2011, 101 min. Written by Julia Leigh. Photographed by Geoffrey Simpson. With Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood. IFC Films.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens December 26 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.
January 27–February 2, 2012. Showtimes 2:00, 4:30, 7:00, 9:15. Note: there will be no 7:00 screening on Monday, January 30.
SF Film Society Cinema
1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)
SF Film Society Cinema
1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan)






