Girl Asleep

Synopsis: Fourteen-year-old Greta Driscoll (Bethany Whitmore) has just moved into a new neighbourhood with her father, Conrad (the film’s screenwriter, Matthew Whittet), her mother, Janet (Amber McMahon), and her older sister, Genevieve (Imogen Archer). On her first day at school she meets Elliott (Harrison Feldman) and the two quickly become firm friends. When Greta turns fifteen, her parents defy her wishes and invite her whole class to a birthday party.Suddenly Greta is yanked out of her comfort zone of being a wallflower content with her childhood and flung into a strange world otherwise known as adolescence.

The idea of a theatre director crossing over to film is not new in recent Australia cinema. Former Belvoir Street Theatre Artistic Director Neil Armfield has been excelling at it for quite a while and Malthouse Theatre’s Michael Kantor has recently had a crack as well. Now it’s the turn of Rosemary Myers, who is also the current Artistic Director of South Australia’s pre-eminent children’s theatre, Windmill Theatre.  For Myers, the shift to film is, perhaps, not such a big gear change.  Her theatre work, both at Windmill and before that at Arena Theatre has always relied heavily on complex soundscapes and the incorporation of projections and moving images.  It was probably only a matter of time before the visual elements became the predominant focus of her work and, with some initial encouragement from both the Australia Council and Screen Australia, Myers has now brought Windmill’s 2014 stage hit to the big screen.

There’s a lot of style going on in Girl Asleep, from the quirky titles cleverly incorporated into the fabric of the scenes (an idea that would be familiar to viewers of the British television comedy series ‘Teachers’) to the garish, saturated colour palette that so well suits its '70s setting, to the odd little touches of hyper-realism where images in photo-frames or on album covers can inexplicably come to life, and, of course, the slightly surreal beckoning of the deep dark woods that lie at the bottom of Greta’s garden just beyond the run-down white picket fence. It’s in these woods where Greta’s fearful fantasy of her approaching adolescence is played out with the aid of some fantastic puppet-like costumes, some unsettling circus characters (courtesy of local circus company, CirKidz) and Huldra, a kind of spirit guide played by the exceptionally talented Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

The film’s strong production and costume design by Jonathon Oxlade (who was also designer for the theatre version) and art direction by Erica Brien dominate what is essentially a simple coming-of-age story that has all the usual elements at hand – the bitchy gang of girls, the excruciatingly embarrassing parents, the wayward older sister and so on. What makes this story stand out, though, is the relationship between Greta and Elliott, one which explores that most difficult of all questions, can an adolescent boy and girl be friends without that friendship being undermined by sexual tension. Whitmore and Feldman are excellent in these roles and  between them carry the bulk of the film.

Girl Asleep never quite lets go of its stage origins. The scenes are played with a heightened sensibility that steers well away from naturalism and for a lot of the time the framing is squarely front-on so that we retain the effect of looking at scenes played on a stage. It all feels quite deliberate and, generally, serves the story well (especially when you pay attention to what’s going on in the background of the scene) but it also leaves the film feeling a bit stagey and stilted. At times, you can feel strong echoes of Jared Hess’s 2004 cult hit, Napoleon Dynamite, but, like that film, it’s an unashamedly bold and original vision that’s being pursued here and, for the most part, it pays off.

 

 

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