A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Or, as I said in the ‘rate the last movie you watched thread’, "the Persian language arthouse vampire movie that somehow manages to out-Jarmusch Jim Jarmusch."
This is style over substance, perhaps, but as with Orlando, the style sort of is the substance. (It certainly wouldn’t have been the same if it hadn’t been filmed in black and white.) That’s not to say it’s entirely without plot or character though. It’s a good deal less talky than Jarmusch’s Only Lover Left Alive, but it has American indie art film sensibility. I didn’t really consider the whole nationality/politics angle before, but it’s either Americana through an Iranian lens, or Iran as presented as an American indie movie, or both. There are skateboards and headscarves and cute guys in James Dean-type poses, all of it underlined or thrown into relief by the fantasy-horror vampire aspect.
It’s hard to describe this film without referencing other vampire movies. It’s a little bit like Let the Right One In in its portrayal of the budding friendship/love between a boy and a vampire. Someone already mentioned Near Dark (another female-directed vampire movie), it also from its title and whole premise absolutely reminded me of the very start of Buffy the Vampire Slayer the TV series where the girl seems so concerned and then it turns out she is the monster and bites the guy she is with:
But for all that it’s quite different to any of them as well, its own unique take on the vampire genre that encompasses power imbalances and urban decay and light and shade and drugs and revenge and love and connection and cats - all in a very visual way.
I especially liked the part where the girl and Arash meet and she takes him home and plays White Lies' Death, which is one of my favourite songs and used to good effect. The soundtrack was good in general, I thought. It does drag a little in parts, but overall I thought it was pretty great.