&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/14888?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Sleeping+Beauty+*+review%3AArticle%3A1647180&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=Obs&amp;c4=Drama+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CCulture&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=Philip+French&amp;c7=11-Oct-16&amp;c8=1647180&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Review&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=&amp;c25=&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2FDrama&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first film by Australian novelist Julia Leigh, &lt;em&gt;Sleeping Beauty&lt;/em&gt; is a curiosity, a combination of Krafft-Ebing, Charles Perrault, the brothers Grimm and some sexual fantasies out of magazines such as &lt;em&gt;Forum&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Erotica&lt;/em&gt;. It centres on Lucy (Emily Browning), a rather blank Australian student who&#039;s paying her way through college as a clerk in an office, a waitress in a cafe and a sex-worker. The most lucrative activity involves being drugged into a coma by a creepy 40-something matron in order to sleep with rich elderly men who are told they can do almost anything (including touching her neck with a burning cigarette) except penetrate her body. The dialogue is mostly laughable and delivered in the stilted manner of up-market softcore porn of the &lt;em&gt;Emmanuelle&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Story of&amp;nbsp;O&lt;/em&gt; variety, but it&#039;s far from erotic. The name of Jane Campion does not appear in the credits, but Julia Leigh speaks of her key role as &quot;mentor&quot; at every stage of the production, and Campion calls the film &quot;a fascinating portrait of how some of us live or sometimes have lived&hellip;heartbreaking, tender, terrifying. I love it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/drama&quot;&gt;Drama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/philipfrench&quot;&gt;Philip French&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html&quot;&gt;Terms &amp; Conditions&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds&quot;&gt;More Feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;clear:both&quot; /&gt;