The Terror of Total Vulnerability in ‘Sleeping Beauty’
Julia Leigh quietly reinvents the familiar fairy tale as a horror film
Writer Julia Leigh’s directorial debut, Sleeping Beauty, stars Emily Browning as Lucy, a restless college student trying to make ends meet by doing odd jobs. These lead her to become a professional “Sleeping Beauty,” a woman paid to allow men to touch her while drugged and unconscious. With no jump scares and very little in the way of special effects, Leigh turns the fairy tale of a woman whose vulnerability makes her desirable into a nightmare where that same vulnerability is the source of the film’s horror.
The first time we see Lucy, she’s undergoing a medical experiment, presumably for pay. In one long, unbroken take, Lucy swallows a tiny camera attached to a long cable, gagging every few seconds as a medical student feeds the cable down her throat. Once it’s in place, she has to sit and hold the cord while trying not to gag, her head tipped back and her mouth open.
This long take sets the stage for what we’re about to see. The camera is still and the characters are outwardly calm and composed, but one is enduring what feels like a physical violation, despite her consent. There is an undeniable feeling of danger and menace; we may not know its source, but we are already afraid for Lucy.
The film hints briefly at outside factors that pushed Lucy into a situation where she’s forced to accept any gig she can get. Her mother calls her at her desk job, and Lucy asks how she got this number and then recites a credit card number from memory, all while glaring at her supervisor. Later, Lucy confides to another type of supervisor, the madam for whom she winds up working, that her mother is an alcoholic who runs a psychic hotline. It’s not a huge leap to conclude that Lucy is supporting both herself and her wayward mother. It’s hard to fault Lucy for choosing to help rather than cut her mother off. But each small violation sets her up for larger ones, like the medical procedure, and from there it’s only another small step for her to say yes to the madam whose job listing she answers.
Lucy’s new employer is beautiful and elegant, a sophisticated madam who provides a variety of services including sex but also more rarefied, seemingly “tasteful” forms of pleasure for her wealthy, older clientele. The first job offered Lucy is as a provocatively dressed waitress; men (and one or two women) come to the brothel for a fancy dinner, served by a group of women wearing only lingerie—all in black except for Lucy, who wears only white, possibly to signal that she’s new.
After dinner, as Lucy serves brandy, one of the men swats her on the behind, causing her to fall and smash the decanter. She’s horrified, but the host reassures her, telling her there’s “no harm done,” as if she’s the one who made a mistake. Even this small incident evokes a sense of danger; Lucy may have people on her side who will reassure her when she’s upset or encourage her to try again, but no one (including Lucy herself) makes a move to reprimand the man who assaults her, or to prevent something like this from happening again.
Lucy’s final and most horrifying move toward self-surrender comes when she agrees to drink a soporific tea, after which, the madam explains, she will wake up feeling “profoundly restored.” What the madam does not tell her is that while she’s asleep, a man will come in and do whatever he likes to her naked, sleeping body, as long as it doesn’t involve penetration.
The madam has to amend this rule after the second man to use this service — the same one who slapped Lucy’s rear — stubs out his cigarette behind her ear. After that, the madam includes a rule that no marks can be left on Lucy. Lucy knows none of this but it’s not a stretch for her to put the pieces together; after all, she’s being paid by the same madam who insists on secrecy for the sake of her clients, and when she finds that telltale burn, it becomes clear someone is touching her while she sleeps.
The idea nags at her so much that she buys a tiny camera and sets it up on a shelf just before passing out during her last appointment. Watching her endure something so repellent without even knowing what’s happening to her is incredibly uncomfortable, but in a way that holds the viewer captive. We feel a strange responsibility to keep watch over Lucy while she’s drugged, since she herself is helpless.
In the film’s final violation [spoiler alert], the same elderly man who hosted the party (the one who kindly tells her “no harm done”) commits suicide while in bed next to the sleeping Lucy. The madam wakes Lucy while the corpse is still lying next to her, and the full weight of what has been happening to her finally comes crashing down.
Leigh keeps the camera very still throughout these nearly unbearable scenes of men manhandling Lucy, and Browning’s complete surrender during these scenes is nothing short of heroic. By refusing to cut or even move the camera, Leigh forces us to acknowledge that what we are seeing is real: Browning really is swallowing this medical device, or being dropped by this elderly man who thought he was strong enough to carry her slumbering form around the room, or being licked on the face by another old man with anger issues. It’s the opposite of the sleight-of-hand usually employed by horror films: no musical stingers, no medicine cabinets closing to show the villain’s face in the mirror, no shadowy forms lurking in the background. This horror is front and center of the frame, and our heroine’s last tragic act is to scrape together the courage to look at it.
Stream Sleeping Beauty on Tribeca Shortlist now.
