Just Awesome Cinema(For Me): Sleeping Beauty(2011)

I have to admit, I get a kick out of calling a particular DVD retailer and asking about this film. Every time, without fail, they direct you to the Disney version, with Aurora, Prince Charming, and the evil Maleficent. Well, let me be the first to tell you...this ain't a Disney film. There is no Prince Charming, no Maleficent, and the eponymous "Sleeping Beauty" is as far from one dainty, virginal princess as one can get. She chuckles when the idea is considered that her vagina is a temple; she admits that it is far from a holy site.

Thus, one of the reversals revealed within the Australian film Sleeping Beauty. The Beauty, played by the wonderful Emily Browning, is named Lucy. From the opening credits, Browning's character Lucy contrasts the innocent roles she's portrayed up to this point, such as Babydoll and Anna: she participates in a strange clinical study testing her gag reflex(a doctor or such sends a long tube down her throat and injects air in her chest), does cocaine, instantly has sex with a man she meets in a bar, and avoids paying rent at a friend's house where she is staying. We are taken through Lucy's life as a college student, working various odd jobs, and dating a guy named Birdman(Ewen Leslie). From the various scenes, I could only gather that our heroine is complacent with her life, and wishes for something more. What that is is never explored.

The main plot begins to take root when Lucy answers an ad from Clara(Rachael Blake). If I squint my eyes and ignore the rest of the film, it would have been a perfect scene from a grindhouse flick; in fact, this is one of the scenes displayed prominently in the trailer. Basically, when Lucy meets Clara, she is told to strip, and, along with Thomas(Eden Falk), her body is inspected for imperfections. She is then told the parameters of the job: she is to participate in silver service in lingerie for wealthy clients. Clara outlines to Lucy that there will be no penetration; Lucy could care less, and even welcomes the opportunity.

That earned a chuckle from yours truly.

Fast forward to Lucy entering a plush mansion, where she meets the lead waitress...who tells Lucy that her lipstick has to match...her, er..."special place". She is soon dressed in skimpy white underwear, serving elderly rich people, along with older, sexy babes in stark black underwear, with their breasts OUT. She earns her first paycheck, and soon, Clara presents an escalation of the present deal: at Clara's private mansion, Lucy will be drugged into a deep slumber, and rich clients will have their way with her.

Meanwhile, Birdman, who seems to be suffering from drug use, gets worse. Lucy has three encounters with rich clients, all while naked and vulnerable in slumber. The first man(Peter Carroll) simply wants "all his bones broken" and sleeps with her. The second man(Chris Haywood) uses cigarettes in an act of sexual sadism. And the third man(Hugh Keays-Byrne) seems to have watched either WWE or love old adventure serial posters...cause he carries Lucy's slumbering body around the room, and then slams her on the bed.

Soon, 'ol Lucy is getting scared, discovering a mark on her body, and begs Clara to tell her what is going on. Clara refuses to share the truth of the encounters, thus prompting Lucy to buy a micro camera, swallow it, regurgitate it before her slumbering session with the first man again, and setting it up to film said encounter. The film ends when a horrified Clara, thinking Lucy is dead, quickly performs CPR to awaken the "Sleeping Beauty". Lucy wakes up, looks around, and starts screaming. The reason? I don't know. Yes, the first man is dead besides her, but it does not look like she is screaming in terror. She strikes the bed, which implies anger. So...again...I don't know WHY she is screaming.

I will admit, I have a bias towards the beautiful Emily Browning...not to mention, she has GUTS. To bare your whole birthday suit, without batting an eye, and participating seriously in some of the outlandish things Lucy was subjected to in the three encounters says a lot about this young woman. My hat is off to this awesome actress, who doesn't stoop to using body doubles(I'm looking at you, Lohan and Frieda Pinto), but gets out there and shows herself, honestly. And that says how seriously she takes her craft.

That being said, the film...my thoughts on it is...as a grindhouse aficionado, I felt that a perfect opportunity was wasted. Judging the film without Browning, on its own merits...it seemed pretentious to me. I know, I know, the filmmakers weren't trying to make it this way, that they had a message to get across...but I missed it. Granted, it wasn't all fanservice...for your shots of Browning and the other beauties in skimpy lingerie, you had the three encounters consisting of a naked and vulnerable Browning with wrinkled, equally naked old men. It definitely was not a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-to moment for yours truly.

The film seemed to drag at times as well because of its artsy focus. Before the first encounter with the slumbering Lucy, the First Man launches into a long ramble with Clara about a story of when he was 30 years old, and how he had a book, and how he wants his "bones broken". I was laughing because Clara seemed to reflect my thoughts at the time..."what is up with this old man, and can I get on with my life?"

Then, there was Lucy. We don't get to see much about her. She seems to go through life bored, and seems to do the things she does for the hell of it. She does drugs, sleeps with guys left and right, and finally serves as a toy for wealthy old men. Hell, the only time she seems to care about herself is after the second encounter with the sexual sadist, and feeling the cigarette burn left after. Even then, she doesn't do anything until the end. I don't think your audience will find her relatable, just frustratingly one-note.

The film is definitely shrug-inducing. It lacks the fun of Sucker Punch, or a defining twist like The Uninvited. I would go so far to say that the "artsy" focus was a huge detriment, but that is my very personal view. The reason I say this is that it had the potential to be like a exploitation film...Lucy being trapped in the claws of wealthy elderly guys, who hold her in sexual bondage, and forcing her into sleeping fits. Yeah, I know this isn't for everyone...but this film TEASED so many exploitation elements, it was very frustrating to see that it refused to go all the way.

I consider Emily Browning to be my Danny Trejo. You know how Robert Rodriguez made "Machete" because he met Trejo and considered him like a Mexican version of an action hero? I wish I was a powerful filmmaker at the moment; I would consider Browning to be like my Tiffany Shepis or Linnea Quigley...an cinema heroine of horror and other types of genre films. I would love to write the movie with Emily battling a chainsaw cult(like Quigley in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers) or matching wits with a masked killer(like Shepis in Nightmare Man).

Anyway, the film itself gets a C.

Just Awesome Cinema: Sucker Punch(Includes Spoilers!)

In mankind's eons' long history, there has always been stories, and story cycles. In often the case, stories, while in cycle, always transform with the times, becoming something completely different each time humanity reaches a new era, but maintaining enough consistency to not change completely. Thus, for example, the mythological and folklore heroes of millenniums past become the pulp and superheroes of the modern age. This also happens when stories shift function, from explanation of natural phenomena to entertainment for the popular conscious.

Long story short...the spectacular Sucker Punch taps into the story cycle and story archetype originating with Alice in the world famous Alice in Wonderland(just "remade" last year by Tim Burton) and manifesting later in the heroine Dorothy Gale of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz...i.e. the young heroine trapped in a strange, dreamlike fantasyland. And just in case you did not get the memo, the costume and hairband of our heroine, Babydoll(played by the beautiful Emily Browning(damn, i have a crush on that woman!))is a nod towards Disney's version of Alice.

You can't judge by the typing, but that last remark was typed with a Chesire grin on my face. Sucker Punch not only homages Alice, but Dorothy as well...at least, imo; My reference for the homage comes from the 1939 MGM production, where, at the end of the film, after Dorothy clicks those red heels and return home, it turns out that Oz and her adventures in it were all a dream. Apparently, the movie creators figured that the audiences of the time would not accept the fact that Oz was real, even though that was the case in the novels. And in the modern day, it seems that some audiences and some professional critics can't make heads or tails of this movie, and lash out, calling it "bad". But more on that later.

The film itself, described by its creator Zach Synder as "Alice In Wonderland with machine guns"(although I would use Wizard of Oz), is about a young woman in the 1950s, known only in the story as Babydoll(Emily Browning) who, due to circumstances involving the death of her mother, her younger sister, and abuse by her corrupt stepfather(Gerard Plunkett), is taken to the mental institution known as the Lennox House. There, under the watch of the asylum's main psychiatrist, Dr. Vera Gorski(Carla Gugino) and corrupt orderly Blue Jones(played with despicable perfection by Oscar Isaac), Babydoll awaits her doom at the end of a lobotomy needle, courtesy of a underhanded deal between her stepfather and Blue. Her stepfather wants her out the way, to hide the truth about Babydoll's sister's death, and to obtain the family fortune left by her deceased mother.

This is where my MGM Wizard of Oz reference kicks in. Babydoll creates an elaborate fantasy world in her mind, where she is a dancer, brought to a brothel owned by pimp Blue Jones to be sold to the mysterious High Roller in five days(corresponding with her real world countdown to the lobotomy). There, she meets the rest of her crew: sisters Sweetpea(Abbie Cornish) and Rocket(Jena Malone), Blondie(Vanessa "Far from High School Musical" Hudgens), and Amber(Jamie "Making up for Dragonball: Evolution" Chung). When told to dance before Blue and her fellow dancers by the brothel's madam, Madame Gorski, Babydoll, in order to get over her shyness, retreats into a second fantasyworld, where she becomes an awesome schoolgirl warrior. In her first venture into this second-level fantasy world, she is given a mission by a mysterious sensei(Scott Glenn) to obtain five items: a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a mystery.

These five items all correspond with items in the real world, all detected by Babydoll upon first entering the asylum. After succeeding in her first mission in the "inner" fantasy world, Babydoll returns to the first level fantasyworld to learn that her dancing is so potent, that it causes tears in the eyes of Blue and applause from her fellow dancers(when she dances, she goes into a trance, her mind always returning to the second-level reality for missions, where she obtains each item on her list; or an alternate interpretation is that she views each dance as a mission to gain each item). Afterwards, she vows to escape the confines of the brothel(in the real world, this is the asylum) and asks for help from her four new allies.

And thus, Sucker Punch is off and running. As one commercial puts it, it is "Kill Bill meets Inception". I would probably substitute an anime title in place of Kill Bill, such as Kite or Blood: The Last Vampire; but the Inception comparison is correct and unavoidable. Both films play on levels of reality and dreams, and the blurring between them at various points. And unlike what most professional critics and some audience members would lead you to believe, Sucker Punch's exploration of reality versus dreams is definitely on par with Nolan's dream opus. Of course, unlike Inception, the subject of dreams versus reality itself isn't explored...but both are used in Sucker Punch to craft the journey of its heroine from start to finish, initially giving her the will to escape, and finally the mental and emotional strength to confront the monstrous Blue Jones(in all of his various incarnations) at the end of the tale.

Thus...everything, EVERY single thing in the film is justified, from battles with steam-powered Nazi zombie soldiers on the second-level dream reality to the fetish costumes in the brothel in the first-level of her dream reality. In the end, this is ALL taking place in Babydoll's mind, influenced by real world stimuli like orderly Blue Jones's sexual advances(seen, for example, when real-world Babydoll is scrubbing toilets and Jones roughly caresses her face, making her feel like a prostitute) and the various items around the asylum that she needs in order to make her escape. This is similar to the Nightmare on Elm Street series, where characters' actions and even dreams reflect things in the real world.

While the story is very sound, the special effects are awesome, and the battles, while not uber-creative(sharing another trait with Inception's somewhat stock dream battles)are...well, awesome. Yes, we might have a somewhat cliche dragon battle, but it also involves a WWI(or WWII?)style-bomber, girls with machine guns, and their sexy leader, a girl in a schoolgirl outfit and a katana. Did I mention that said girl slit the throat of a baby dragon and stole the very organs that create fire out of his throat? Yes, it happens in a dream within a dream...but it is still cool.

It boggles the mind why this film is getting a bad rep. This is an excellent, quality film, with a wonderful story that invokes Dorothy and Alice and their journeys through dreamlike fantasylands, but with a darker, more adult tone. Instead of the fictional folklore traditions of wicked witches, talking animals, and royalty, director Synder draws upon "folklore" and "story" characters relevant to our present culture...anime and video game standbys like dragons, Nazi zombies, giant samurai, and real world fears like evil pimps and sexual slavery. All is cleverly blended together in a story about a young woman dealing with helplessness by retreating into a dream world.

This movie gets an "A" from this audience member. If this is a bad movie, I want more please.