There is certainly a place for hyper-stylized films. Just ask Wes Anderson. But the fine line between stylizing for its own sake and stylizing to enrich the story is the same line that separates good films from hollow exercises in technique. This is the trap that Rosemary Myers falls into with Girl Asleep, itself an adaptation of Myers and writer Matthew Whittet’s own stage play. Much like Rushmore or Moonrise Kingdom, the film is about juvenile trials and tribulations and the struggles of entering adulthood. The story captures the imagination with its blend of coming-of-age tropes and fairy tales, but the visuals are stylized to the point of becoming artificial, ultimately threatening to strip Girl Asleep of its sincerity.
Greta (Bethany Whitmore) is your average 14 year old: shy, lacking in self-esteem and desperate for validation. She meets Elliott (Harrison Feldman), the quintessential nerd, shortly before her 15th birthday and finds an unexpected source of genuine support and admiration. But when her parents surprise her with a huge birthday bash and invite her entire school class, her anxiety peaks, as she expects a disastrous, humiliating party scene the likes of which we’ve all witnessed in any number of teen films. What happens instead is that Greta falls into this fantasy world that has previously only existed in her mother’s hand-me-down music box. And the monsters inside are threatening to tear apart the fairy tale forest’s quirky bliss.
The analogy here isn’t very subtle, but it doesn’t have to be. A young girl’s childhood is coming to an end and so too is her make-believe refuge. The lack of subtlety that does hinder Girl Asleep is, instead, in the sheer mechanics of its visual storytelling. Myers opens the film on a wide, still shot, and the scene plays out uninterrupted for a good five minutes. The only movement within the frame is lateral background movement as other kids play basketball. The camera itself pointedly zooms in and out a few times. It’s certainly one way to open your film with a statement. The problem is not only does this static shot not resonate with the story but Myers doesn’t maintain the sensibility of the gimmick consistently throughout the film. Immediately following this scene and the opening credits is a series of jerky hand-held shots following Greta home. The change in shooting style drastically alters the tone, making it seem distractingly unpredictable from the get-go.
Because the very artifice of Myers’ direction is inconsistent, it makes the hyper-stylized sequences come across as all the more cloying in their tweeness. The scene where fliers for Greta’s party are handed out is painstakingly choreographed, but to what end? What purpose does stylized framing and shooting serve if it doesn’t manage to convey a resonating tone? If these directional decisions aren’t helping to establish a filmic mood that allows viewers to better relate to Greta, then it’s ostensibly just for show. This is, however, a problem that plagues the first half of the film more than the latter half. The fantastical side of Girl Asleep is truly its saving grace.
The second half of Girl Asleep takes the relatively simple concept of a young girl’s fantasy being torn apart by manifestations of her fears of growing up and turns it into an engaging, even thrilling story. But too much of Rosemary Myers’ Girl Asleep lacks intention in its artifice and feels like shameless aping of other works. The swamp man (who loves fart jokes) in Greta’s music box looks suspiciously like Noel Fielding’s Old Gregg from “The Mighty Boosh.” And Myers’ early stylized framing was a poor interpretation of Wes Anderson’s hallmark technique.
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