Cert 15, 101 mins
***
Australian novelist Julia Leigh's controversial first feature, "mentored" but not produced by Jane Campion, has Emily Browning as a student who works in menial jobs to fund her studies and answers an advertisement for an audition as Sleeping Beauty.
This, she finds, after attending a strange dinner as a waitress, dressed to order only in her underwear, involves being drugged into a deep sleep while a series of elderly men are given carte blanche to spend the night with her. There is one rule. No penetration is allowed and she must wake up totally unmarked. But the more she sleeps, the more curious she becomes about what is actually happening. So she buys a surveillance camera to record the proceedings.
It's beautifully made, like a strange European art movie, with a spare screenplay, rigorously avoiding anything but a stately eroticism. Browning is notable in what can only be described as an extremely challenging part. The message seems to be about a young woman who finds it hard to break the spell of her basic passivity, but the final word should come from Leigh herself: "I wanted to make a film where the audience responds with 'Did I really see that?' She has certainly succeeded in that.
