the beautiful and the ugly
the beautiful and the ugly, in Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty
“For a man, there is nothing more depressing than the ugliness of a woman,” so writes the aptly titled “metaphysician of evil”, Georges Bataille.
Bataille suggests the bleakness of ugliness; its lack of any opportunity for sacrifice, or occasion to pollute. Beauty, on the other hand, is abundant. Beauty gives rise to desire for the very reason that it may be befouled; that there is space to destroy it, and subsequently, great pleasure “…in the certainty of profaning it.”
When we witness the soporific, necrophilic fantasy that is, Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty, it seems that Bataille may not have been far from truth, in his suggestion that the domain of eroticism is primarily one of violence and violation.
A work of great force and originality, writer/director Leigh’s debut film, was for me, first and foremost, a mediation on the beautiful and the ugly, the power that comes with the ripeness of youth, and the inexplicable link between sex and mortality. Inspired by the novellas of Yasunari Kawabata and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as Leigh’s own struggles with recurrent nightmares, the result is a twisted fable that leaves you a little bit breathless.
We first encounter the insolent Lucy, (Emily Browning), in a science lab, as a researcher feeds a tube into her mouth and down her oesophagus. The setting is austere, and the experience both uncomfortable in its reality, and equally unpalatable as a (painfully drawn-out) cinematic moment.
A detached, yet intelligent young woman, whose behavior is more often than not, nonsensical, Lucy juggles University with several jobs; in a cafe, in an office, in a science lab; also occasionally prostituting herself to some unsavory suits at a local bar.
Leaving one form of degradation for another, she goes on to answer an ad, which sees her working in an exclusive and very private house, where older men are entertained and served by young women.
Once there, she is “promoted,” and drugged by Clara, (Rachel Blake) and willingly partakes in a form of paraphilia known as ‘Sleeping Beauty Syndrome,’ which requires its object to be completely unconscious, on the condition that no penetration takes place.
“You will go to sleep; you will wake up. It will be as if those hours never existed.”
The lovely young body of Lucy, almost luminous in its whiteness, coupled with the opulent interiors of the estate, call to mind a sort of Orientalist indulgence. The voyeurism of Ingres, or the reclining Odalisque in Manet.
The unscarred purity of her flesh is juxtaposed directly against the aging, clumsy bodies of much older, impotent men who make various futile attempts to will themselves to an erection whilst she sleeps.
Although the camera treats these intimate encounters between youth and old age sympathetically, it was difficult to deny the discomfort I experienced when witnessing the two in such close proximity.
In one of the most memorable scenes, Man One, (Peter Carroll), delivers a soliloquy to camera. His words dabble in the fragility of aging, on what it means to die without experiencing the beauty of the flesh. There is a sense here that the young female body, titillating and divine, is equally unknowable. Although imprisoned in these secret chambers, an offering to be enjoyed and destroyed, the body is also itself the locus of the secret; simultaneously desired, and forbidden territory.
The objectification and violation of Sleeping Beauty is treated with a sort of stoic detachment, inviting us into the fable, only to keep us always at arms length. Leigh seems to reference the sadomasochistic Salo, but never really goes that far.
I was quite disturbed by this film, the very idea that such violation could ever occur. Perhaps what moved me the most though, was Lucy’s fixation on her lost hours; the parallels drawn to the lost hours of growing old and the fear that comes with the certainty of entering the longest blink of all.
