Sleeping Beauty
Sundance Selects | Release Date: December 2, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 20 Critic Reviews
Positive:
12
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
Watch Now
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 10, 2011
For those eager to tease out what Leigh’s conceptual exercise is about, the key no doubt lies in Lucy’s relation to her own mortality, with each descent into sleep resembling a death of sorts. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenDec 9, 2011
As repellent as Lucy's story can be, its mystery has a seductive sway, and it does add up to more than the sum of its insistently elliptical parts. Read full review
80
Time OutKeith UhlichNov 29, 2011
Leigh does a stellar job of showing how these events seep into the unaware girl's everyday existence - almost all of the film's sequences are photographed in precisely composed, inherently surreal single shots. Read full review
80
EmpireAnna SmithOct 10, 2011
This will divide audiences as much as "The Tree Of Life," but it's a brave and beautiful calling card for both filmmaker and star. Drink it up, sit back and think of a very different Australia. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam LaceyDec 9, 2011
At its simple core, Sleeping Beauty is a perfectly pitched chamber piece about the menace of voluntary oblivion. Read full review
75
New York PostKyle SmithDec 2, 2011
I'm not, finally, sure what Leigh is saying - but she is a filmmaker with a voice. Read full review
75
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 1, 2011
Sleeping Beauty is best experienced as a piece of fragmented poetry rather than a strict ideological tract. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMichael NordineNov 28, 2011
Julia Leigh's take on the fairy tale is a study in detachment and unspoken dissatisfaction, traits that imbue the proceedings with a barely-contained sexual energy lurking beneath a thin veneer of calm. Read full review
70
NPRIan BuckwalterDec 2, 2011
Leigh, a novelist making her cinematic debut here, directs with a cold and distancing eye. Sleeping Beauty has the deliberate grace of Kubrick, and while comparisons to the sex parties of "Eyes Wide Shut" are inevitable, Leigh's approach is even more sexless and sterile than the master's. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 28, 2011
To be at once earthy and ethereal is an uncommon gift. I noticed it, in Browning, when she starred in "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events," as the calmly eccentric Violet Baudelaire. Already, as a teen-ager, she seemed older and wiser than the events unfolding around her, and, likewise, in Sleeping Beauty, she impugns the drooling antics of the elderly. Read full review
70
SalonAndrew O'HehirOct 10, 2011
I found it gorgeous, opaque and disturbing in roughly equal portions, but it was a riveting experience all the way through. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayDec 1, 2011
Emily Browning gives a game performance as the unconscious sex object, but Leigh doesn't provide her with a lot to work with in terms of motivation, dimension, or any kind of rich interior life. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriDec 27, 2011
Novelist-turned-director Leigh's dryly efficient style is perched between the matter-of-fact and the impossibly arty. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 1, 2011
Though the tone is quiet and the pacing serenely unhurried, Sleeping Beauty is at times almost screamingly funny, a pointed, deadpan surrealist sex farce that Luis Buñuel might have admired. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonNov 29, 2011
Sharp and precise as its tableaux might be, though, Sleeping Beauty never burrows into the brain, and its tenuous provocations fizzle out quickly. Read full review
50
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 2, 2011
Sleeping Beauty is one of those self-consciously artsy motion picture that promises more than it delivers. Read full review
40
Boxoffice MagazineRichard MoweOct 10, 2011
Leigh certainly has a sense of cinematic style and Emily Browning possesses a fragile beauty that hides a remarkably resilient interior. It's a pity, however, that Jane Campion did not exert a more powerful sway on the result. Read full review
40
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyOct 10, 2011
While this psychosexual twaddle will no doubt have its admirers, it seems a long shot to attract a significant following or herald the arrival of a director to watch. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedNov 30, 2011
Movies like Sleeping Beauty are as sensual as cottage cheese, not to mention passé. Read full review
20
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierDec 3, 2011
Though Julia Leigh's surprisingly dull debut is meant to present the mysteries of a troubled young woman, you're more likely to wonder why its star, Emily Browning, is drawn to such demeaning roles. Read full review
More From This Movie

61 Critic Reviews

4.7 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL