Australian erotic thriller shocks Cannes audiences

SLEEPING BEAUTY, a film billed as an erotic thriller by first-time Australian director Julia Leigh, had audiences squirming at its premiere in competition in Cannes yesterday.

It stars 22-year-old Emily Browning, best known for the lead role in Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, as a student who takes a job fulfilling elderly men’s sex fantasies while asleep.

Requiring absolute submission, the job sees her drugged with a tonic that places her in a deep slumber, after which she is placed naked on a bed by her madam in the so-called Sleeping Beauty Chamber of a country mansion.