Sleeping Beauty

Julia Leigh’s ode to passivity is an odd little art/exploitation film.  It has things to say about today’s world of hyper-disconnected sexuality, but I'm not exactly sure what those things are.  The film achieves an atmosphere of chilly eroticism, and star Emily Browning is intriguing to watch, even though she hasn’t created much a character here--although director Julia Leigh’s point may be that post-feminist young women have been reduced to externalized objects, rather than full-fledged people.  There are some creepy and even scary scenes here, but they don’t cohere as a story or a film.