SLEEPLESS BEAUTY

Directed by: Pavel Khvaleev

Starring: Polina Davydova, Evgeniy Gagarin, Olivia Indik

A young woman, Mila, is kidnapped by a mysterious organization known as Recreation. Her unknown abductors talk to her though a loudspeaker and set strict rules: she cannot sleep and has to fulfill bizarre and violent tasks if she hopes to stay alive.

Sleepless Beauty is a film with the power to both disturb and frustrate its audience with equal measure.

It begins with the attempted assassination of an Ambassador during a press conference. We learn of a shady organization who promise their client that they are about to test a new form of assassination prior to subjecting the Ambassador to it. We then meet Mia, while she is chatting to her father and purchasing a new aquarium at a tropical fish store. She is later abducted from her apartment, blindfolded and taken to a rundown factory complex.

She is informed by a loudspeaker that sleeping is forbidden during her incarceration and any time she might succumb to sleep she will be rudely awakened. Thus begins a series of tortures (both physical and psychological) designed to break her down.

All the while this is going on, we are aware that Mia's ordeal is being broadcast to a dark web chat room. Whilst the two administrators comment to each other about Mia's "progress", other subscribers join in and add commentary, not only to Mia's ordeal (and whether it is real or not) but also the scenario that has led her to be in this predicament. I found this element to be quite effective as it was full of the sort of inanity you would find in chatrooms everywhere (one person even gets banned for advertising his own website in the chat scroll).

 Whilst the overall motive of why Mia is being subjected to this ordeal is clear from the outset, what isn't clear is why Mia was targeted in the first place. Clearly this organization has researched her background (including her recent medical history) but it is never understood what brought her to their attention in the first place.

Sleepless Beauty is a film designed to assault your senses and test your patience. The screechy voice over the loudspeaker is incredibly grating (designed to ensure that Mia can't fall asleep). Then there are the visuals. Apart from being confronted with horrific scenarios inside the room, Mai is also subjected to a barrage of grotesque animation whilst wearing a VR headset. We get a small hint of what she is being subjected to early on but later we get a whole 5 minute sequence of animation which is a mix of Terry Gilliam, Hieronymus Bosch and H.R. Geiger. It's a truly bizarre sequence which will definitely mess with your head, and poor Mia is being subjected to it for hours at a time.

One of the more disturbing images comes early on in Mia's incarceration. She is tasked with extracting a baby doll from a bucket filled with bloody offal and entrails. Once she has done so she flings the naked doll to the floor where it lies motionless. The issue here is that the chatroom cameras aren't particularly hi-def, so the bloodied doll could have easily been mistaken for a real baby, however none of the chatroom folk even mention it.

Director Pavel Khvaleev opts for long meticulous takes of scenes which do nothing for the film's momentum. Early on we watch Mia buy a new tropical fish and small fish tank, then when she gets home we watch as she slowly fills it with pebbles and seaweed. Later, after a character is shockingly murdered, we are forced to watch the killer as he slowly mops the blood from the floor. In real time. It could be that Pavel is trying to portray the mundane and banal nature of evil or it could be he just needed to pad out his running time.

THE VERDICT

 Its important when watching Sleepless Beauty that you pay attention to the scrolling chat text as it adds some context as to what is happening and what the end goal is. What it doesn’t explain is why Mia was singled out to be the guinea pig in this experiment. This is a bleak film with zero catharsis for the audience to experience. It's well shot and acted, with some bizarre, disturbing and grotesque imagery to experience but also some long drawn-out moments which amount to very little. Mileage will vary, whether you want more context or whether you are like the chatroom participants, happy enough to watch a woman being tortured.

6 out of 10 (MikeOutWest)