A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (15)
Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour.
Starring Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Maneesh, Mozhan Marno and Dominic Rains. In Farsi with subtitles. Black and white. 101 mins
Before heading off a colleague asked me what I was watching tonight. An Iranian, black and white, feminist vampire movie. The shrugged grunt of response seemed to say, “typical.” Which it isn't. This is a film that constantly marks out its own territory. The opening credits are in English but the dialogue is Farsi. The setting, identified as Bad City, is like semi derelict, deserted Texas city that has been transported to Iran.
(In truth the film is an American indie, and the locations are in California.)
There's a darkness on the edge of this town, and as the town has no centre that's just about everywhere. A slight, silent, nameless female figure watches over goings on – a junkie dad, a cruel dealer pimp, an ageing hooker – a vampire evaluating who her next victim should be. She wears a long flowing hijab that is her equivalent of Dracula's cape.
It's all very strange but in other ways it's very familiar. This is an exercise in studied cool, and Amirpour has done her studying. Her vision takes in elements of Jim Jarmusch and Hal Hartley, Jim Thompson pulp fiction and a deceptively strong David Lynch influence, particularly the Eraserhead style sound design. The thing about this kind of cool is that it is unhurried, slow, a little bit in love with itself. Cool is like a traffic cop who is booking you for a minor infringement – it takes its time and makes a great play over going through all the little details. Which is to say the film is all about the mood and if you don't like its mood it will unbearably precious. It won me over though: it features a charismatic scene stealing cat and an unclassifiable final scene.
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (15)
Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour.
Starring Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Maneesh, Mozhan Marno and Dominic Rains. In Farsi with subtitles. Black and white. 101 mins
Before heading off a colleague asked me what I was watching tonight. An Iranian, black and white, feminist vampire movie. The shrugged grunt of response seemed to say, “typical.” Which it isn't. This is a film that constantly marks out its own territory. The opening credits are in English but the dialogue is Farsi. The setting, identified as Bad City, is like semi derelict, deserted Texas city that has been transported to Iran.
(In truth the film is an American indie, and the locations are in California.)
There's a darkness on the edge of this town, and as the town has no centre that's just about everywhere. A slight, silent, nameless female figure watches over goings on – a junkie dad, a cruel dealer pimp, an ageing hooker – a vampire evaluating who her next victim should be. She wears a long flowing hijab that is her equivalent of Dracula's cape.
It's all very strange but in other ways it's very familiar. This is an exercise in studied cool, and Amirpour has done her studying. Her vision takes in elements of Jim Jarmusch and Hal Hartley, Jim Thompson pulp fiction and a deceptively strong David Lynch influence, particularly the Eraserhead style sound design. The thing about this kind of cool is that it is unhurried, slow, a little bit in love with itself. Cool is like a traffic cop who is booking you for a minor infringement – it takes its time and makes a great play over going through all the little details. Which is to say the film is all about the mood and if you don't like its mood it will unbearably precious. It won me over though: it features a charismatic scene stealing cat and an unclassifiable final scene.
