Girl Asleep

Set in 1970s Adelaide, Girl Asleep is an engaging Australian comedy starring Bethany Whitmore as young teen Greta, a shy new student at a high school full of mean girls and disco hipsters. Befriending a pale, skinny, chattering outsider named Elliott (Harrison Feldman) and reluctantly falling in with a surreal trio of blonde bullies, Greta feels pulled in all directions at school and misunderstood at home, where her parents are largely preoccupied with trying to control an older, sexually freewheeling daughter. Greta's preference for flying under the radar in life is upended, however, when her folks decide to throw a birthday bash for her and invite all her new (and largely unknown) classmates. Greta's ensuing emotional crisis sparks the film's most interesting sequence: a prolonged fantasy, set in dangerous woods, that can't help but remind one of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. Filmmaker Rosemary Myers presents Greta's story in picture book fashion, with hyper-real images, exaggerated action, and gaudy colors. Recommended. (T. Keogh)