A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: Movie Review

Writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an eclectic cinematic mishmash: an Iranian noir-spaghetti Western-love story…with vampires. And yet, somehow, it all works. The score—including music from Portland's own Federale—feels like it wandered in from a Sergio Leone movie. The stark black-and-white photography, smoke, prostitution and drug use paint it as the noirest of noirs. The sparing use of vampire behavior—just three necks are bitten—makes the vampire more human than many leads in conventional romance movies.

Arash (Arash Marandi), a handsome 20-something in a white T-shirt and jeans, is the son of a junkie in Bad City. His father is in a significant hole to his dealer. A vampiric girl (Sheila Vand) prowls the shadows—following, waiting and judging.

For all its spaghetti Western flourishes, this is a quiet film about loneliness at heart. The Girl with No Name wanders the streets alone. Despite living with his addled father, Arash is just as alone. They meet on a well-lit suburban sidewalk when Arash, rolling on ecstasy, can no longer stand. The girl wheels him home on her skateboard. Amirpour leaves this romance understated: This isn't true love, it's two lonely people who met each other.

Amirpour the writer knows when to get out of the way of Amirpour the director. What could have been a trite love story or a generic vampire movie is instead a sombre, moody, beautiful piece of filmmaking. The characters move from place to place. They keep their thoughts to themselves.

From the scratchy, hypnotic electronica when the girl follows the dealer to his cocaine-filled apartment to Morriconean chantings, the score keys the offbeat dream that is A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. 

The girl drifts in and out of the shadows under her black cloak, sometimes as a disembodied face, other times in a humanizing light with her horizontal-striped white shirt visible. The streetlights when Arash meets the vampire are bright and saturated as if the acid just started to kick in. 

The minimal dialogue and nearly silent romance leaves the viewer with something rare: a movie quiet enough that you can soak in the imagery and be bowled over by the propulsive score.

Critic's Grade: A-

SEE IT: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night opens Friday at Cinema 21.

WWeek 2015