The Sleeping Beauty
Strand Releasing | Release Date: July 8, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
69
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews
Positive:
8
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumJul 5, 2011
Following 2009's "Bluebeard," French filmmaker Catherine Breillat continues her unique and psychologically, erotically daring deconstruction of classic fairy tales and the female condition. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrAug 18, 2011
At its best, The Sleeping Beauty reclaims fairy tales as a kind of oral folk REM state, chewing over anxieties about adulthood, behavior, sex, and belonging in potent symbolic form. Read full review
85
MovielineStephanie ZacharekJul 7, 2011
Breillat manages to give us a lush, quiet spectacle with The Sleeping Beauty. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenJul 28, 2011
One could argue that, in varying degrees, all of the iconoclastic French director's films have dismantled femme-centric fairy tales. But in this, the second of a planned trilogy, she's confronting burnished old folk tales head-on. Sly and playful, it's a beauty. Read full review
75
New York PostV.A. MusettoJul 8, 2011
This film is no fairy tale for children. Not only does it contain nudity and sex, both straight and lesbian, but it also presents childhood as a time of terror. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayJul 7, 2011
It's clear what Breillat is trying to do here in the abstract - and The Sleeping Beauty is never less than gorgeous to look at - but the movie doesn't hang together as a story, and "stories" are what these fairy tales are meant to deliver. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisJul 7, 2011
The pleasures of Ms. Breillat's work are its commitment and seriousness and its raw, sometimes very funny perversity: she's lets everything hang out, without apologies. Read full review
70
Village VoiceMelissa AndersonJul 5, 2011
Though The Sleeping Beauty ends ambiguously, it remains consistent with the logic that Breillat has laid out: A girl's childhood and adolescence are often culturally sanctioned confinements. But the prisoners aren't always victims; the jails can be escaped through the courage to "go alone into the world." Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanJul 8, 2011
Breillat, seemingly inspired as much by C.S. Lewis and Hans Christian Andersen as by original author Charles Perrault, doesn't really make the most of her subversive premise. Read full review
50
Boxoffice MagazineEd SchiedJul 9, 2011
The Sleeping Beauty lacks either the dramatic intensity or the sexual frankness that drew attention to her previous films "Fat Girl" and "The Last Mistress." Read full review
40
Time OutJoshua RothkopfJul 5, 2011
Breillat, as always, goes her own way, but her impressionistic scenes barely cohere, even at this brief running time. Read full review
25
Slant MagazineDiego SemereneJul 5, 2011
Judging from The Sleeping Beauty, and the previous "Bluebeard," the provocations stop with the choice of the material, as the tone and style of these films are jarringly well-behaved. Read full review
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