This coming October we get a small indie film from Australia which has caught my attention since I saw it had been one of the entries to the main competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film is Sleeping Beauty and it’s the directorial debut by Australian writer-director Julia Leigh and starring one of the industries rising young stars in Emily Browning.

Sleeping Beauty is described as an erotic drama which follows Browning’s university student who becomes involved in the hidden world of beauty and desire and those young women hired and trained to play a role in them. From what I could tell from the trailer and reading about reactions by audiences to the film at Cannes this film looks to have a similar tone and theme to British illustrator and erotic writer Erich von Götha (pseudonym used by Robin Ray).

With Cronenberg also exploring the more hidden corners of sexuality through psychoanalysis with his film A Dangerous Method it looks like the Awards season will have another sexually-charged film joining it around the discussion table with Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty. The film is set for an release in the US sometime this October 2011.