Wake up to yourself, audiences, GIRL ASLEEP is already the sleeper hit of Australian cinema in 2016.

While the local box office has been hibernating, GIRL ASLEEP has been garnering awards and audiences in a dream run overseas and at local film festivals, and just recently named the winner of the 2016 CinefestOZ $100,000 Film Prize, Australia’s greatest film prize.

On the page by Matthew Whittet, on the stage by The Windmill Theatre, and now on the screen directed by Rosemary Myers, GIRL ASLEEP has not been dozing and its transition to the screen is mostly seamless.

Starring Bethany Whitmore as Greta, whose approaching fifteenth birthday is a harbinger of great tumult and change, and Harrison Feldman as Elliott, her geeky, nerdy, needy friend, GIRL ASLEEP is a journey into the absurdities of the teenage mind. Navigating puberty in 1970s suburbia, Greta doesn’t want to grow up. Her mum and dad are embarrassing and her sister disinterested. Geeky Elliott is her only ally. Greta’s surprise 15th birthday party is on track to be the worst night of her life – until she’s flung into an odd fairy-tale universe with a warrior princess.

It is this flourish of over-egged metaphor that threatens to capsize an otherwise clever, quirky, and engagingly comedic film.
Production values are top notch with cinematography by Andrew Commis another gem from the lenser of The Rocket and The Daughter.

Production and costume designer Jonathon Oxlade making his cinematic debut after honing his design skills in the theatre takes his Seventies mission brown statement and builds on it brilliantly.
Performances are terrific, with honest, fresh and unforced turns by Whitmore and Feldman, and terrific support from Amber McMahon as fitness and fashion conscious mum and Matthew Whittet as the dad joke prone dad.

Conjuring Heathers and Mean Girls, Maiah Stewardson as ringleader Jade and her twin henchmaidens, Saph and Amber, played by Fiona and Grace Dawson, provide chilling bitch bullying characters, natural nemesis for Greta.

Flights of fantastic fancy erupt in stepping the light fantastic with impromptu choreography that push the theatrical to energetic enjoyment.

The flaws of the protracted dream sequence are quickly forgotten and forgiven with a knock-out denouement, a totally satisfying finale to, for the most part, is an exuberant and imaginative to the canon of coming of age movies.