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An Adult Fairy Tale

Amos Lassen | Little Rock, Arkansas | 03/20/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

""House of the Sleeping Beauties"


An Adult Fairy Tale


Amos Lassen

"House of the Sleeping Beauties" (First Run Features) is a thriller about loneliness, eroticism, sex and immortality based on a novella by Yasunari Kawabata and stars Maximillian Schell and Angela Winkler.
Director/writer/actor Vadim Glowna is also in the film.
Edmond (Glowna) is a widower who is suffering in loneliness. He is in his late sixties and lives in Berlin. Kogi (Schell), an old friend, tells him about a place which is secret but for a payment one can lie with a beautiful, sleeping young woman. The girls there never awaken but they do move and they are taken care of by the Madame (Winkler).
Edmond decides to visit the house and he becomes both entranced and seduced by the unconsciousness of the women. He begins to visit more and more frequently and in doing so he begins to probe the limits of his mortality and begins to think about memories he has long repressed. When he sees the Madame smuggling a dead body into the house, he discovers a new desire to find out about the activities of the house but he is conflicted with his own addiction for those that live there.
There is a great deal of philosophy here but unfortunately the atmosphere does not allow it to fully emerge. Another negative is the acting which is uniformly bad with the exception of Schell. In fact the film is offensive as it dwells on the nastiness of old men and nothing is explained especially why and how the women manage to sleep so soundly. And we also do not understand who these women are and where Madame finds them. I understand that the film is an allegory but I have no idea about what. There is a lot of symbolism but it is far too cluttered. While the film is mesmerizing to watch, it really says nothing.
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