Art Smitten: Reviews - 2016

Heavily stylised and endearingly quirky, Girl Asleep could be very easily described as “Wes Anderson does Napoleon Dynamite”, but in reality it’s much, much more than that. Sure it’s full of dorky humour and a kitsch yet meticulous 70s aesthetic, but it’s got a unique and very sweet take on the coming-of-age story. The girl of the film’s title is 14-year-old Greta, who’s just moved to suburban Adelaide and is having trouble fitting in at school. She meets another outcast kid named Elliott and the two strike up a nice friendship. Soon after, her parents decide to throw her a 15th birthday party, and reluctantly she agrees. There’s bullies, there’s sibling rivalry, there’s anxiety over appearance and romance, all the standard teenage things. It all sounds like such a simple premise. But that’s basically the point. It all sounds like such a simple premise because it is, and deliberately so: that which is generic is of course universally resonant.