A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
“If there was a storm coming right now, a big storm, from behind those mountains, would it matter? Would it change anything?”
Vampire thriller? Love story? Feminist allegory? Western? Social commentary?
A Girl never seems to decide what it’s about…and that’s ok.
This was on the Movie Cat’s watchlist for a long time - in part because of the presence of Masuka the Cat - the hottest fanged feline property of the last decade - in part because we dig vampire films, and in part because of director Ana Lily Amirpour’s brilliant work on the quirky and underrated The Bad Batch.
Also, vampire is Iran? Sold!
So was it worth the wait and what the heck is this movie about anyway?
Ok, no big Spoiler here: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night deals with vampires - or at least one vamp, an unaging figure called The Girl (Sheila Vand - Argo) who haunts the small, dusty Iranian oil town of Bad City. Beyond that we get into genuine Spoiler territory, so enter freely and of your own will.
The flick begins with a James Deanesque Arash (Arash Marandi) tooling around in a classic ‘57 Thunderbird with Masuka the Cat. A “good boy,” Arash takes care of his junkie father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh - The Big Lebowski and a bunch more), works hard as a repairman, and loves his car.
Things go sideways when Saeed (Dominic Rains), the local (and apparently Bad City’s only) pimp, dealer, and all around bad apple, leans on Hossein and takes Arash’s Thunderbird as partial payment for dad’s drug debt. This sets off a chain of events that lead Arash down the road of knavery and…ok…we’ll get there.
Meanwhile, we are introduced to Atti - Saeed’s only employee and apparently Bad City’s only prostitute - played wonderfully by Mozhan Marno (House of Cards), an odd sexually ambiguous character called Rockabilly (Reza Sixo Safai), who pops up at random times for no apparent reason, a poor skater boy (Milad Eghbali), and of course, The Girl.
We also learn that The Girl has been stalking the streets of Bad City for a while, targeting men who prey on women…and when they aren’t handy, murdering innocent homeless people.
The Girl’s first on-screen kill (remembers - you are in Spoiler territory) is Saeed. All of Vand’s scene are unsettling - she plays a predator who seems to only barely control her murderous urges - but this one is especially so. It begins with a brilliant bit in which we see Saeed’s normal “mating ritual” - a couple lines of coke, some weight lifting, counting cash, and playing with guns. The effect is to makes his character equal parts obnoxious and pitiable in its obvious insecurity. This is followed by a gruesome, slow motion killing that, while not long, is not for the weak stomached.
Meanwhile, Arash shows up to speak with Saeed. Passing the departing Girl, he finds The Pimp dead and discovers Saeed’s stash of money, guns, and drugs. Not wanting to let them go to waste, he decides to take over the late S-Man’s role as Bad City’s main drug dealer (see, we told you we’d get back to that road of knavery).
Fast forwarding the rest of the movie: The Girl steals skater boy’s skateboard, she and Arash meet and maybe have sex, Dad tries to shake his drug habit and renew a relationship with Atti (The Prostitute), bad things happen, people die, and Masuka the Cat finds a new owner.
So what’s the verdict?
The Bad:
A Girl has a hard time deciding just what it wants to be. This was Amirpour’s first film and you get the feeling that she wasn’t sure if she would have a chance to make another. She seems to want to shoehorn every influence, theme, and idea that has every occurred to her into the movie and the results are mixed. At times it makes the story feel layered; at others, just random.
The Good:
Vampires in Iran. What a cool idea.
Also…
The film is in black and white. Modern films can feel pretentious when made that way, but in this case they pull it off and it adds massively to the dark and oppressive feeling of the movie.
The Girl is also a suitably complex character. While she does have (maybe) noble qualities, she is also clearly a monster. After she kills Saeed, the camera lingers on her taking his gold wristwatch and other jewelry, while leaving his money and other valuables. Later we see that she has a large stash of similar items in her room. The suggestion is that these are trophies of her kills - a very serial killer behavior.
Vand’s portrayal of The Girl takes her beyond Dexter territory though. Her movements are animalistic. She is a predator. She does not follow or observe people; she stalks them. Every scene leaves you feeling queasy. You know the monster is fighting to come out, but you don’t know when it will happen.
Finally - while overwhelmed by the visceral disquiet of the movie, Amirpour injects some fascinating social commentary into the film. The role of “the other” in society is an obvious theme, but an even more interesting one is the role of repression. The social control of Iranian society - and the position of women in that society - is clearly something that enrages The Girl. At the same time, those same controls seem to help her keep the monster inside enough for her to interact with others and (imperfectly) live by a code with some basis in morality…well, except for that whole killing street people thing.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night isn’t a perfect movie, but it is solid. The locale, acting, and cinematography are very good, Vand is excellent, and it tells an interesting story. We recommend it.
You can catch it HERE.
Three out of Five Hijab Wearing Fangsters.
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