by KatieBot
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT (7 out of 10) Written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour; starring Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Dominic Rains, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnó, Milad Eghbali; currently unrated; picked up for distribution; running time 104 minutes
The NEXT category at Sundance is infamous for producing some of the most out there things someone could see in a cinema but sometimes they can be a gamble to watch. Without risk there can be no progress, but sometimes they don’t work. An Iranian Vampire Western Romance? Well that gets people attention if nothing else.
Briefly; I don’t know anything about Iranian film and this is the first Iranian movie that I’ve ever seen. As such I can’t comment on how different it is from other Iranian films but from what I was able to gather, it was a departure from normal Iranian cinema. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night chiefly follows Arash (Arash Marandi) and his fellow citizens of Bad City that consists of junkies, prostitutes, and where people go to die. What they don’t know is that they are being stalked by a lonely vampire (Sheila Vand).
Our summary is very brief because there isn’t much of a story really. Mostly that comes down to the fact that there aren’t much in the way of characters outside of Arash and the unnamed vampire. Everyone else in Bad City is an archetype of the various type of people you’d find in a rundown city. Arash’s Dad fills the role of The Junkie, but The Prostitute, The Pimp, The Rich Girl, and The Orphan are all on hand as well. Arash is portrayed as our every man who is just trying to get by. He’s an okay protagonist but I felt like a movie about a vampire should have had more scenes with the vampire; Vand almost felt the like secondary character in her own movie.
That might have more to do with pacing than anything else. We spend a lot of time with all of the characters but I felt like we didn’t need to. They are archetypes and the thing that is great about archetypes is you don’t need to develop them. That way all of the focus can be on the main characters. It was like writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour realized she had a great concept but not enough to sustain an entire movie. It’s a shame that the movie kept focusing on other things because it pushed the ‘romance’ part of this story to the side. The Girl and Arash don’t have that many scenes together. The saving grace is that Vand and Marandi have enough chemistry to counter it.
Vand is the stand out as the vampire. She is delightfully creepy and the movie doesn’t skirt around what she is. Instead it focuses on her being dangerous from the moment she appears on screen. The movie is shot entirely in black and white and Vand wears a long black hijab throughout most of the movie. It makes it feel like she’s slipping in and out of the shadows. The movie is better whenever she is on screen whether it is putting on makeup to lure a victim in or biting someone’s finger off. It’s just a shame that she isn’t on screen more and we have to keep cutting away to Arash arguing with his Dad.
The soundtrack is also worth noting it has a great mix of music with both a western edge and a Middle Eastern feeling to it. The directing and writing are well done enough and Amirpour has some great chops. Her concept is solid as well and the movie is never boring, it just always felt like something was missing. Perhaps more vampire and more romance in the vampire-romance-western. Or maybe there needed to be more scenes of a vampire riding a skateboard she just stole from a kid after she scared him half to death.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is an interesting film that is worth watching if for no other reason than, you’ve never seen anything like it before. It skirts the edge of being great but can’t quite stick the landing. It has been picked up for distribution so if it looks like something you might enjoy keep an eye out.