SFF NOTES: Girl Asleep (2016, Dir. Rosemary Myers)

It is such a shame when a film doesn't live up to the promise of its establishing shot, especially when, like in Rosemary Myers' Girl Asleep, that opening sequence is so, so rich and so, so simple. A girl (Greta played by Bethany Whitmore) is sitting on a school bench. A boy (Elliot played by Harrison Feldman) joins her. He clumsily courts her friendship. But there is so much more going on inside and outside the frame. Other players step in. They taunt Elliot. They proposition Greta. And in the background a parade of bizarre, unexplored stories play out, enticingly unexplored. And, in amongst all the mayhem, the camera self-consciously steps closer and closer to Greta and Elliot's gawky, gangly exchange.

It's a little Wes Anderson. It is a little P.J. Hogan. A little 'Kath and Kim'. And a whole lot of delight.

Admittedly, holding that level of energy up, over even Girl Asleep's slender run time, would be a feat. Myers gives it a good shot though, aided considerably by her collaborators, all drawn from from the Windmill Theatre company who co-developed the stage version of the film that premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 2014. The heightened '70s suburban Australiana they create together, stocked with dad jokes, lounge stars, Stubbies, Kingswoods and disco, hums around Greta as she stares down an unwanted fifteenth birthday and an even more unwanted first step into womanhood/self-determination/sexuality/assertiveness/you get the point.

It is that angsty step that upsets the momentum of Girl Asleep (and it isn't too much of a spoiler to say it is the "asleep" part). In moving from a heightened reality to an even more heightened reality the film digs itself into a narrative hole. The momentum dissipates in an unbalanced Wizard of Oz venture that is *less* interesting and less inventive than everything that led up to it (they've even quite shamelessly lifted Old Gregg directly out of 'The Mighty Boosh').

The bulk of this extended sequence, which eats up much of the second act, is curiously redundant given how much of the dramatic tension is already on its way to resolution in the "real" world. The thematic repetition gets tiresome and the erratic pacing and thunderous sound design makes it increasingly hard going, after the uncomfortable joyousness that precede.

These issues aside, there are interesting things going on in terms of the film's treatment of coming of age in a gendered world and Whitmore pulls off a fantastic finale. Hand in hand with Myers, she whips up all the film's previous energy and uses it to its best advantage to deliver a kick-arse (and genre-bendingly surprising) closing.

Girl Asleep is a fascinating example of presenting ideas while standing astride the theatrical/cinematic divide. I'm intrigued to see if its stage-bound companion work is any more successful. This is by no means a failure, it just doesn't make the most of its considerable strengths.

★★★

Trailer:

Girl Asleep screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.