Girl Asleep: On Screen At Palace Nova As Part Of Adelaide Film Festival – Review

Palace Nova, Tue 20 Oct Girl Asleep was originally an award-winning children’s play; a critically acclaimed production for Adelaide locals Windmill Theatre, penned by Matthew Whittet. Now it has made its debut on the silver screen, again all locally. However the result of the rewrite is a film that tells of a 15-year-old girl’s coming of age, but is rated 15+ due to the relatively mild raunch and swearing that has been added. What has transformed well into the new medium is the creative flights of imagination of Greta, the new kid in town. The first scene has some delicious back-play to the simple boy (who doesn’t fit in) meets girl (who doesn’t fit in) in the foreground. That back-play grows as Greta's imagination takes more importance as she tries to hold onto her childhood while becoming a young woman. Eventually we’re swept into her alternate imaginary world for the adventure of accepting her growing up, and in which, quite cleverly, key characters of her real world take on bizarre parts – I’m sure this delivers the playwrights intent better than what they were able to achieve on the stage. Some questions still remain for me, such as, is ‘15th birthday really her coming of age as such? (I suspect for younger girls in particular this might be a suitable ‘line in the sand’, but the film has been rauched up to the point of achieving a 15+ rating – which may preclude much of the target audience?) The main characters are endearing, but tend to stereotype. The plot has some quite enjoyable and bizarre features of imagination, but overall it similarly tends to predictability (still, that is quite a common feature of many large budget, very successful films). If this were intentional, then as hammed up melodrama with even more of the sometimes bizarre little creative twists and back-play it might work better? Girl Asleep is set in the 1970s and overuse of the word ‘awesome’ fit the milleau (I’m not admitting any personal knowledge at this point, but I might have been there, perhaps). On the other hand, were the melodrama hammed up a little more, the bouncing Sandman, poor dad jokes, fondue references etc. all might have helped achieve a better focus and some of the important messages about growing up might have been more clearly and cleverly delivered. Clayton Werner Girl Asleep continues at Palace Nova Cinema from 12pm until Sun 25 Oct. Book at adelaidefilmfestival.org. Click HERE to purchase your tickets.