Film Review: Sleeping Beauty
I saw this a few weeks ago, so this is kind of late, but here goes anyway. There’s “spoilers,” just FYI.
Sleeping Beauty (2011) is an Australian movie directed by Julia Leigh, starring Emily Browning and Rachael Blake. It’s about a young college student named Lucy who joins a high-end erotic waitressing service that caters to the wealthy, in order to make ends meet, and further agrees to be one of the “sleeping beauties,” so to speak, who form a more specialized subset of the girls. For each engagement she is driven to the madam/Clara’s house, where she takes a powerful sedative in a cup of tea that induces a very heavy, undisturbable, deathlike sleep for a short period, and while she’s out like the eponymous Sleeping Beauty, some client who has paid for the privilege, usually an older man, gets into bed with her and can do whatever they like with her unconscious body, short of actual penetration, for the duration of an hour. She is promised that when she wakes up, she will not remember a single thing, and for her it will be as if it never happened.
Tags: cryptic, death and the maiden, femininity, film reviews, hauntingly beautiful, minimalist, modern fairy tales, sexuality, trailers
The Drawings of Mako
Gorgeously delicate line drawings featuring macabre/erotic depictions of languid maidens tangled up in choking undergrowth, deadly flora, murderous branches, their hearts and anatomies (literally) exposed, from Japanese artist Mako.
Tags: anatomical-themed, black and white, death and the maiden, dolls, erotic, femininity, intricate line drawings, nature, skeleton, strings, surreal
Death and the Maiden: The Art of Abigail Larson
Abigail Larson creates beautiful, Gothic-inspired illustrations, often depicting her favorite literary themes: the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, H. P. Lovecraft, Lewis Carroll, and fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast.
Her neo-Victorian drawings, done digitally but emulating the look of ink + watercolor (her original medium), are highly stylized, fluid, haunting, and arabesque, appearing to be effortlessly graceful and detailed. The figures are gaunt, highly articulated and expressive. Sketchy and with an almost jerkily delineated look at the same time as they are meticulously precise and polished, these alluring illustrations effuse personality, and are perfect as modern interpretations of classic Gothic tales.
Abigail Larson has cited some of her biggest artistic influences as Arthur Rackham, John William Waterhouse, and Edward Gorey. See below for some more of her work!
Tags: abigail larson, alice in wonderland, death and the maiden, edgar allan poe, gothic literature, illustrations, modern fairy tales, neo-victorian, posters
The Art of Egon Schiele
Some works from the Expressionist painter Egon Schiele:
Tags: art nudes, death and the maiden, expressionism, modernism, self-portraits
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