Do NOT bother with . . . . . SLEEPING BEAUTY

It's not so much irritating as boring, spending 104 minutes wondering what's going on onscreen? And realising early on that what's going on offscreen is that I just don't care. Am I being teased? is the apparent pointlessness of everything happening onscreen meant to create an air of mystery that will be resolved at the end? Maybe and no, in that order. And above all, I did not care. Hence an overall sense of pointlessness - as to what the central character is up to, why this film was made, and my spending time seeing it. Repeat, don't care.



I left the cinema with a sudden and crushing sense of the futility of my own life. Then an existential epiphany - the only meaning in my life would be to tell you lot not to see this pretentious but unsuccessful attempt to be something. But what? Latin American magical realism? Del Toro? A hint of Bunuel? The corrosive, toxic influence of serial cinema criminal, Michael Haneke? A touch of the 60s anti-hero (Godard, yawn) about a thoroughly unpleasant protagonist? Hint of mid-20th century existentialism (Antonioni) in that most of the other characters are even more obnoxious?

To allay my boredom and distract from my irritation I spent much of the time trying to identify the many genres this movie reminded me of. It seems derivative of so many and yet fails to achieve even the status of pastiche. Evidence of the growing cancer of film school and film studies on the products of young writer-directors? Please make movies that are good stories, rather than movies which are pale imitations of millions of other movies. Enough of referencing! Try originality!!

If you are still reading, lets sum up the action. Unpleasant female student appears to be assisting her troubled finances by playing the role of guinea pig in scientific experiments. Allegory? Metaphor? Body as object for exploitation? She moves on to a bizarre new career being paid to serve wine wearing only her underwear in a creepy establishment whose customers are repulsive old men. Only a step further to get her kit off and enter an even more bizarre role in the same establishment as a drugged - hence insensible (asleep, thus the title) - prostitute whose repulsive old male clients are forbidden from "penetration, or leaving marks".

So is this meant to tell us something about sexual power and sexual exploitation? About gender relations? If so, just tell us! Either it's a tortured allegory, in which case a strong argument for in-your-face filmmaking like Ken (Cathy Come Home) Loach. Or it's just empty crap. I reckon the latter.

So often these days i sit in cinemas feeling as though I am watching a student short that has been dragged out into feature length. Technically competent, and a couple of good ideas at the outset. But simultaneously too clever for itself and not clever enough. Just not enough going on to justify having been funded in the first place.

Yet another desperate attempt to fill that gap between true art movie and hideous US popcorn blockbuster. Despite all this there will be many out there who react on the Emperor's new Clothes principle - it's so different and incomprehensible and frankly unenjoyable that it must be a triumph of world cinema and the genius of auteur creativity blah blah. Just watch for the prizes at Cannes, Sundance, Venice etc. But meanwhile go and see Drive instead.