A Girl Walks Home Alone at NightTo quote Rudyard Kipling: "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." Society is a paradigm of opposites operating in tandem...male and female...black and white...predator and prey. Even the title of the film--A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night--evokes impressions of victimization, of danger, impressions conditioned by our society and perspectives of what qualities identify a "girl". But drawing conclusions based on assumptions has often led to unfortunate consequences. Remember what Kipling said.
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A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a vampire movie, but one of the most unusual entries into the genre; unusual because it stands to reason that the perceptions of a vampire movie generally revolve around the concept of a "Dracula"-like figure, an imposing, commanding male who preys upon his less fortunate victims, often female. This film subverts this convention on more than one front, not only from a gender perspective, but from a cultural one. Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (who I expect to hear a lot more of in the future based on this entry), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a Persian-language film, but embodies and sculpts tropes of American film like an artist molds clay, such as our first introduction to Arash (Arash Marandi) stealing a cat, with the white tee tucked into tight blue jeans, cool in sunglasses, a "James Dean" or perhaps a "Marlboro Man". Arash takes pride in having worked to buy his car, which is all too quickly snatched up as collateral to cover the debts for his father, Hossein (Marshall Manesh), by an unscrupulous drug dealer, Saeed (Dominic Rains). Saeed, also a pimp, abuses a prostitute in his employ, Atti (Mozhan Marnò) and thrives in the bleak, generally unfriendly part of the ominously named Bad City, until he naively invites a young girl--The Girl (Sheila Vand)--up to his apartment to take advantage of her. (While A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night subverts tropes of vampire fiction more often than embracing them, one such myth is that a vampire can only enter a residence after having been invited.) And it is after the girl has turned the tables on Saeed that her path and Arash's cross for the first time, a brief encounter as she exits his home, his blood still thick on her lips, and Arash seizes the opportunity to reclaim his car, as well as Saeed's capital and drugs, becoming a dealer himself. It is not until they meet again after a party where Arash--too genial to make it as a cutthroat drug dealer--has gifted some ecstasy to a girl he fancies named Shaydah (Rome Shadanloo), and had been encouraged to take some himself. Dressed a bit ironically in a Dracula costume--given his erstwhile profession as a drug dealer like Saeed, someone who bleeds his victims dry--he leaves and stares up at a lamppost, and the girl's curiosity is piqued. Perhaps it is his costume which offers her some comfort, or perhaps it is that Arash calls forth some forgotten feelings in her, but she invites him back to her apartment to listen to rock music, where it is implied they begin a relationship. Arash struggles to cope with his father's addiction, and is forced to choose which life he will abandon.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is shot in black and white, with long, expressionistic shadows and stark contrasts between light and dark, reminiscent of one of the most emblematic of early vampire films, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. The girl of the film is not unlike the spirit of Bad City, a shadow gliding along the stark walls of the barren urban landscape. The girl's chador recalls a kind of vampiric cape or shroud--a garment which was prior to the Iranian Revolution, generally reserved for occasions like funerals--which she wears as if in defiance of its associations with Iran's post-revolution oppressive patriarchy. (I recommend Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis for additional context here.) The girl capitalizes on the perceptions this creates in her victims, like Saeed, who see her as another submissive girl by her dress and quiet manner, a cunning ploy often found in nature's deadliest predators, such as a Venus flytrap. And while A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night deals with feminist themes, it also provides a commentary about perceptions of masculinity. Notice how Saeed attempts to showcase his virility via his recently acquired car to Atti, or how he lifts weights to impress the girl when he invites her up, all of which portray him as an arrogant jerk in addition to his abusive and criminal behavior toward others in the film. The girl is also an avenger, who largely exacts her own perception of justice upon her victims--all men--but even with a dose of misandry. There is a scene where she intimidates a young boy (Milad Eghbali), effectively bullying him into abandoning his skateboard, which she then commandeers for herself, not unlike how Saeed bullies Atti into fleeing his abuses when she requests her cut of her prostitution wages. The girl glides down the streets on the skateboard like a wraith, her chador billowing behind her, as if she were floating above the macadam. Bad City is apparently inhabited by very few people it would seem, as though it were on the brink of complete desolation, a shadow realm of half-life where a vampire like the girl can thrive. It is a strange place, where the dead are not buried or cremated, but instead simply rolled down into a gully, left to rot. Bad City is an industrial place, where dozens of oil derricks bleed the land dry; but what is the profit in this? It is vague as to how Arash made his money to buy his car, but following his acquisition of Saeed's drugs, he immediately goes into the same business. Bad City is in a grip of stagnation, of economic and spiritual stasis...a living death. Perhaps Arash senses this, and the feeling that the girl can provide him with some means of egress is what makes him come back to her after their first night together. The girl may be a bloodsucker, but Arash is not free from sin; the earrings he gives to the girl were originally stolen from the petulant Shaydah to be used to barter with Saeed in an attempt to get his car back. Both Arash and the girl have been influenced by Western culture--Arash in the way he dresses and his costume choice for the party, and the girl largely in her choice in music. The girl listens to rock music which is predominantly sung in English, music reminiscent of goth rock; appropriately, she also wears heavy eyeliner not only to draw in her victims like Saeed, but giving her a quality like that of a Western-influenced "vamp". Although we can only speculate about the girl's true age, Arash and her are like teenagers struggling to cope with their feelings of love, as well as their own sense of doubt, in themselves and their hearts, a kind of love where you feel more complete with each other than without. This is certainly an optimistic interpretation of the ending, which also carries a sentiment that their union is inevitable and inescapable; but perhaps this, too, is just another way of describing love.
Recommended for: Fans of vampire movies, yes, but for fans who are looking for a novel interpretation of who victimizes who, and how gender roles in society present parallels for this. It is a striking picture filled with understated emotion and youthful yearning for love as well.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is shot in black and white, with long, expressionistic shadows and stark contrasts between light and dark, reminiscent of one of the most emblematic of early vampire films, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. The girl of the film is not unlike the spirit of Bad City, a shadow gliding along the stark walls of the barren urban landscape. The girl's chador recalls a kind of vampiric cape or shroud--a garment which was prior to the Iranian Revolution, generally reserved for occasions like funerals--which she wears as if in defiance of its associations with Iran's post-revolution oppressive patriarchy. (I recommend Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis for additional context here.) The girl capitalizes on the perceptions this creates in her victims, like Saeed, who see her as another submissive girl by her dress and quiet manner, a cunning ploy often found in nature's deadliest predators, such as a Venus flytrap. And while A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night deals with feminist themes, it also provides a commentary about perceptions of masculinity. Notice how Saeed attempts to showcase his virility via his recently acquired car to Atti, or how he lifts weights to impress the girl when he invites her up, all of which portray him as an arrogant jerk in addition to his abusive and criminal behavior toward others in the film. The girl is also an avenger, who largely exacts her own perception of justice upon her victims--all men--but even with a dose of misandry. There is a scene where she intimidates a young boy (Milad Eghbali), effectively bullying him into abandoning his skateboard, which she then commandeers for herself, not unlike how Saeed bullies Atti into fleeing his abuses when she requests her cut of her prostitution wages. The girl glides down the streets on the skateboard like a wraith, her chador billowing behind her, as if she were floating above the macadam. Bad City is apparently inhabited by very few people it would seem, as though it were on the brink of complete desolation, a shadow realm of half-life where a vampire like the girl can thrive. It is a strange place, where the dead are not buried or cremated, but instead simply rolled down into a gully, left to rot. Bad City is an industrial place, where dozens of oil derricks bleed the land dry; but what is the profit in this? It is vague as to how Arash made his money to buy his car, but following his acquisition of Saeed's drugs, he immediately goes into the same business. Bad City is in a grip of stagnation, of economic and spiritual stasis...a living death. Perhaps Arash senses this, and the feeling that the girl can provide him with some means of egress is what makes him come back to her after their first night together. The girl may be a bloodsucker, but Arash is not free from sin; the earrings he gives to the girl were originally stolen from the petulant Shaydah to be used to barter with Saeed in an attempt to get his car back. Both Arash and the girl have been influenced by Western culture--Arash in the way he dresses and his costume choice for the party, and the girl largely in her choice in music. The girl listens to rock music which is predominantly sung in English, music reminiscent of goth rock; appropriately, she also wears heavy eyeliner not only to draw in her victims like Saeed, but giving her a quality like that of a Western-influenced "vamp". Although we can only speculate about the girl's true age, Arash and her are like teenagers struggling to cope with their feelings of love, as well as their own sense of doubt, in themselves and their hearts, a kind of love where you feel more complete with each other than without. This is certainly an optimistic interpretation of the ending, which also carries a sentiment that their union is inevitable and inescapable; but perhaps this, too, is just another way of describing love.
Recommended for: Fans of vampire movies, yes, but for fans who are looking for a novel interpretation of who victimizes who, and how gender roles in society present parallels for this. It is a striking picture filled with understated emotion and youthful yearning for love as well.