Sleeping Beauty
Short description
Lucy is a university student in need of money, supporting herself through a series of odd jobs that eventually lead her into sex work. Answering an advertisement, she takes a well-paid position at a private club where wealthy older men are allowed to act out their desires on her while she sleeps, with penetration the single rule. Drugged each night, she wakes with no memory of what happened, and the gap in her experience gradually becomes more troubling to her than the work itself.
Julia Leigh wrote and directed the film, her first as director, with Jessica Brentnall producing. Emily Browning plays Lucy, alongside Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood and Hugh Keays-Byrne. Made in Australia with Canadian and American backing on a budget of around 10 million US dollars, the film runs 102 minutes.
Audiences have responded to it very differently. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2 from roughly 171,000 votes, while on TMDB the score is 5.4 from a much smaller base of about 700 votes. A film critics' rating of 8.6 from 49 reviews places professional reception far above the audience scores, particularly the TMDB figure.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the fairy tale of the same name by Charles Perrault.
- This is the sixteenth feature-length animated film by Walt Disney Productions.
- Walt Disney deliberately did not meet with or give any instructions to the actors who voiced the main roles. Mary Costa (Princess Aurora) began her musical career at the age of nine. Soon, her dream became to meet and work with Walt Disney. The day after her audition at the studio, she was notified that she had gotten the job. But every time she asked about Disney's directions during recording, she was given no information. He did not meet with her until the film was finished, as he was afraid of influencing her individuality; they had breakfast together for the first time three years later.
- The argument between the good fairies Flora and Merryweather about the color of Aurora’s dress (pink or blue) was the result of a dispute among the film’s creators on the very same issue.
- The storybook shown at the beginning of the film was real. It was created by Eyvind Earle, who was responsible for the film’s design, background, and colors. The book was restored in 2008.
- For the first time in the history of the Walt Disney Company, one person was responsible for the color, backgrounds, and overall design of the entire project. That person was Eyvind Earle. Earle's colleagues did not like his working methods (or the results he achieved). It took Earle from 7 to 10 working days to create a background, meticulously detailed, while it usually took no more than one working day.
- The widescreen format required enormous attention to detail in the imagery. Some animators were only able to create one character drawing per day, and 24 drawn images were required for one second of a character in motion.
- A flamethrower was used to create the sound effect of a dragon's fiery breath. The sounds of snapping jaws were actually the clicking of castanets.
- As early as 1938, Walt Disney conceived of making an animated film based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," but due to the outbreak of World War II and the financial problems of the studio, Disney had to devote himself entirely to shooting educational and military films and short films, and "package" cartoons ("Play My Music," "Melody Time," "Fun and Fancy Free," etc.).
- The famous waltz of Aurora and Phillip was used in 1991 in Disney's animated film "Beauty and the Beast."
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
