'Sleeping Beauty' offers sexually supercharged role for 'Sucker Punch' star Emily Browning

Julia Leigh is a first time filmmaker, but you'd never know it from the confidence that is on display in each and every frame of her film "Sleeping Beauty."

There are few tricks more difficult in filmmaking than tackling the subject of sexuality on film in a frank and adult way without making something that is, for lack of a better term, pornographic, and yet it seems like one of the things that serious filmmakers attempt every so often, and that has baffled even some of our very best. For someone to make their debut with a movie that digs into onscreen eroticism and that attempts to do so in an intriguing, almost clinical manner is genuinely daring, and it is impressive how close Leigh comes to pulling it off.

Even tougher is making a film with a passive protagonist, but that's the entire point of this film. Lucy (Emily Browning) moves through life as if she's watching it on TV, disconnected from almost everything she does in her daily life. She works a handful of jobs while going to college, and as we watch her deal with the details of her day -- washing tables, submitting to a repeated experiment for cash, copying and collating papers -- she is barely there. Even when she goes out to bars looking for empty sexual encounters, she lets things happen. She leaves her fate up to a coin toss. The only person she seems to have any real connection to is a young man named Birdmann (Ewen Leslie) who is in the final stages of some unnamed fatal illness, and it's obvious it takes a huge emotional toll on her each time she sees him.

She stumbles into a new job that skirts the line of being prostitution, involving her dressing up in revealing lingerie to serve drinks at private parties, and Leigh begins to tease the audience even as she tests Lucy. Where is her personal line? What is too much for her to consider? Where will she stop once she starts down this path? Her employer, Clara (Rachael Blake), offers her a new job, and this is where the movie takes a left turn into a genuinely unexplored area on film, the ultimate version of a passive sexual encounter. Lucy agrees to let herself be drugged so that she slips into a deep sleep, so deep that even striking her won't rouse her, with the only rule being that the men who pay for her company in that condition are not allowed to penetrate her. Short of that, anything goes.

Hippy chick Vanessa Hudgens shows the French how chic 70s style is done as she spends her first day at Cannes

She is fast becoming one of the most stylish stars in Hollywood, with her influential bohemian and hippy luxe style.
And now Vanessa Hudgens is showing the eternally fashionable French just how the chic Seventies style is done as she spent her first day at the 64th Cannes Film Festival today.
The 22-year-old Sucker Punch star was spotted out and about in Nice, France, looking stunning in a cream tiered strapless dress, which showed just the right amount of her toned and tanned legs.














She paired the look with a gorgeous long emerald green embroidered velvet coat complete with tasselled trim.
The actress accessorised with some slightly more modern accessories, including a leather clutch bag and tan platform sandals.
Accompanied by two women tapping away at their mobile phones and another boho-clad beauty in a floor-length maxi-dress, Vanessa smiled as she made her way around the city's chic streets passing by it's abundance of designer stores.

Sucker Punch: Into A World Where No Man Has Been

A literal understanding of the film won’t do you much good. Essentially, it is a story of the triumph of a woman over the demons both inside and outside who may seek to harm her. Focusing on the fantasies of Babydoll (Emily Browning) whose father has institutionalized her in a mental asylum, it’s a great film for a woman feeling powerless in any type of hell. It almost places you inside a psychological dreamscape in which you can live out fantasies of revenge. In this way, the film becomes something akin to a video game at times, which is possible because the non-linearity is seamless, and the visual effects dramatic and aimed at full immersion.

What is equally effective is the feeling of being trapped inside a woman’s head, where absolutely nothing will get in her way. Men, monsters, robots, dragons, men who are monsters, all are vanquished in a quest for freedom. This is a study in dissociation, which occurs as a response to trauma and allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time. For this reason, there is some real discomfort here with the horror of rape and abuse ever-looming. There is only one male character portrayed in a positive light, which is why it is unlikely that a ‘man’s man,’ would find this film watchable, and because it is such a strong statement it would be totally inappropriate for any man to make any comment about the physical attributes of the female characters in this film, and they are a-plenty.
The soundtrack is potent and contributes greatly to the sinister, menacing tone of the film, but also to the strength of the female voice that comes out here. Many of the songs are remakes of older, well-known tracks from the 80’s and 90’s and almost exclusively sung by women. Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) will never sound the same again. The reworking of the Pixies classic Where is My Mind? was particularly poignant.

Sucker Punch!

Sucker Punch is the long-awaited fantasy-action movie from visionary director Zack Snyder, who also wrote the film. Some may recognize his name as the director of Watchmen and 300.
The film centers around a young girl named Babydoll in the 1960s who is planning an escape from the cruel mental institution to which she is wrongfully committed by her wicked stepfather.
The movie, very much like Inception, deals with multiple universes of fantasy and reality. In Sucker Punch both universes mirror the abuse that Babydoll faces. In her fantasy worlds, she has to retrieve five items that will help her escape the horrors of the asylum, along with help from four other girls.
The movie is filled with action sequences and subtle hints towards its true meaning. Sucker Punch is a tricky, mind bending movie that will make you think about it for days after you see it. The ending can be left open to interpretation. I have talked to many people that have all come up with different theories on the movie.
The film delivers sucker punches left and right. It is surprisingly emotional and haunting, despite the fact that it was advertised as just an action movie. I have been following the production for a little over a year and I certainly couldn’t have predicted any of the surprising moments in the film.

A topic that Sucker Punch deals with is the abuse and unjust practices that took place in mental asylums, especially towards women. While critically panned, mostly for accusations of misogyny, the film is completely feminist.
Accompanied by an eerie and haunting soundtrack, Sucker Punch deals with the power of the human mind and how we all can easily deal with traumatizing events by escaping in our minds and in turn, conquering those who try to oppress us.