Girl Asleep Leaves a Bad Taste in Your Mouth

Harrison Feldman and Bethany Whitmore in Girl Asleep (2015)

Girl Asleep is simultaneously two movies; one is fantastic, the other is absolutely terrible.  As the name implies, a large portion of the film is entirely comprised of one lengthy dream sequence (because short dream sequences aren't obnoxious enough, right?), and it simply doesn't work, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Girl Asleep is, at first, a charming little independent film about fourteen year old Greta Driscoll, a shy girl who is dreading life at a new school after moving with her eccentric and often times overbearing parents. There, she meets Elliott, an odd but friendly and promising new friend, who seems ecstatic at the notion of befriending the new girl in school.

Initially, Girl Asleep comes across as something which may have been made by the likes of Wes Anderson. It has a clear and crisp visual style, with bright colors, odd and unique mapped out camera shots which are stationary and last as long as they need to for a visual joke to come across, and in its quirky strangeness somehow also manages to capture some surreal take on seventies fashion and interior decoration. Every character is wonderfully acted and charming in their own way, the music is jaunty and fits the oddness of the universe well, and there are clever details such as text reading "later that day" nestled on a bucket of chicken on the dinner table, or "the next week" hidden on a poster on Greta's bedroom door.

Then, the dream sequence begins and unravels everything. The dream sequence is, for lack of a better word, awkward. From the start the audience is aware that it is only a dream, the title of the movie itself already braces audience members for the need to endure this sequence. Despite that, it feels the need to drag on, and it certainly drags on. Greta is assigned meaningless tasks to solve so that she can return to the real world, and as she runs from imaginary monsters or fights off angry villains, the budget (or rather, the lack of budget) is suddenly painfully clear. Chase scenes are uncomfortable because the dream is meant to feel sincere and even nightmarish, but all the audience sees is two actors running in place in front of what looks like a background imposed onto a cheap green screen. Every instance that the audience thinks the dream may end soon, they're met with another conflict, and the meaningless and otherwise pointless scene drags on.

Finally, the dream ends, and the rest of the film feels stilted and uncomfortable, as though it's not quite interested in settling back into the fun and unique world it had introduced us to before it was ruined with chase sequences and packs of angry wolves.

Dream sequences are rarely ever effective. Rarely does someone leave the theater or turn off the television and think "that movie was fantastic, but I wish the part where he had that nightmare lasted longer!" When the audience is forced to sit through a scene which is typically meant to be brief and reveal something psychological that the character is grappling with, and that scene is stretched out to last almost as long as the rest of the film, it's difficult to not feel uncomfortable and wonder if the movie was even worth watching.

It's particularly depressing that this travesty took place in such an otherwise fantastic movie, nearly destroying the entire film as a whole. Without the dream sequence, Girl Asleep is heartwarming, memorable, endearing, and the sort of film parents could watch with their teenaged daughter to show her that she's not alone in grappling with the fears of puberty. With it, Girl Asleep is a confusing and uncomfortable wreck. Were such a strange sequence placed in an otherwise traditional film, perhaps it would have worked, but in the case of Girl Asleep the film's real world already required audience members to suspend their disbelief and shrug off questions regarding how strange and eccentric Greta's friends and classmates are. Asking the audience to suspend their disbelief even further, and to take an ugly, cheap, and unappealing world within Greta's dream seriously as well, is simply too much.

In conclusion, if you want to experience a fun and quirky film which mirrors Wes Anderson's style but also brings a bit of its own zest, then I recommend Girl Asleep. Just make sure you're ready to fast forward when Greta's wandering aimlessly through her psyche.

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