Emily Browning plays Lucy, a university student drawn into a strange world of erotic intrigue in this coldly austere debut from novelist Julia Leigh (author of THE HUNTER and DISQUIET). With an alcoholic mother, a troubled friendship with a drug fiend and a history of selling her body for science and for sex, Lucy’s past is far from uncheckered. So when she’s offered the “sleeping beauty” job, it’s not so much a chance to leave her present situation as it is an inevitable, grotesque amplification of it. The job is simple enough: Lucy will go to sleep, and then a group of aging sensualists will do whatever they like to her submissive, naked body. Everything except penetration. 

Bringing a stern, detached objectivity to the gut-turning subject matter, Leigh’s twist on the Grimm fairy tale is as bold as it is assured. After the script spent two years on the Hollywood blacklist (a collection of the best unproduced screenplays floating around the industry), SLEEPING BEAUTY provoked strong reactions from critics and audiences when it debuted at Cannes this year.