Cannes Do

Looking forward to catching the very haunting and disturbing looking debut by Julia Leigh, Sleeping Beauty.  It premiered in Cannes, last night presumably, the review from The Guardian is mixed at best.  Performance and cinematography are given kudos while the whole has been tagged as somewhat preposterous.  Presumably the storyline of a prostitute whose specialty entails embodying Sleeping Beauty while men do what they wish with her drugged, defenseless body.  The content appears harsh and unapologetic.  In the trailer as the boss is speaking of the contract that this Sleeping Beauty will be obliged to take she insinuates the heavy penalties that would be in effect in luie of breaches of her "discretion".

Though the genre and content is a complete 180 from what I am about to discuss, the film reminds me somewhat of Battle Royale.  Battle Royale sees students rounded up and pitted against one another in a vicious game.  It is the teachers and government, those who you would suppose to be there to take care of the youth, that devise this operation.

Young people become embroiled in violence and illegality that is being overseen by mature, hierarchal figures.

Taken from the final words of the trailer, both films suggest that participants will feel "profoundly restored" and fulfilled in their undertakings.  It leaves one to consider, when society is aware of the plight of reckless youth, and the wayward paths that they journey upon, are these youth solely to blame?  Those who hold authority, while they are there to encourage, are also ready to punish.  The mob crowd has reached a younger generation, and the destruction is being controlled by the power elite.


(P.S. -  The mob crowd thing has been something we discussed all year in class, a big thing in American Lit it would seem)