A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) – 3/5

The bat, the lad and the cat

„A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night“ is a live action film from 2014 that runs for minimally over 100 minutes and if I say that this is an American production from a British writer and director, then this is not to be taken for granted. There are a handful reasons for this and the movie’s Iranian background was also used heavily for promoting this film. This refers to where the film is set, the language that is spoken in here (Persian), the backgrounds and origins of the cast and crew etc. Still for example the really stunning actress (especially when we see her hair) who plays the title character, Sheila Vand, was born in America, even if she surely has different roots. I will not go too much into detail about the cast here, simply because I am not really familiar with the actors, but I think they all did a good job, even if the male protagonist felt a bit bland here and there and the Dracula makeup could not change that. As for Vand, she was also in Ben Affleck’s „Argo“ and there her background is also fitting given the movie’s story. So she is definitely either the star here or a candidate for biggest name of this film from almost a decade ago. Maybe the release was already over ten years ago if you read this review of mine a bit delayed. In any case, it was the first full feature film for Ana Lily Amirpour after a handful of short films and if you look at the awards attention it received, it was definitely a success. So it makes total sense that she filmed a few more films since then, like for example „Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon“, a not totally new film, but still relatively new film that was also shown in some movie theaters lately. Aside from that, she has worked on a television series linked to successful filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and also directed a Cristina Aguilera music video, although I am not sure if the latter is something to be proud of. The former sure is, so good for Amirpour.

But today we talk about this film here and the thing that comes to mind first is that it is in black-and-white, which is of course not a given, but I liked it as a stylistic choice. It provided the film with some additional bleakness and I am in general a fan of black-and-white films, so it definitely did not take a wrong turn for me this way at all. If you pay close enough attention, you will also see (or rather hear) that the word „vampire“ is not used in this movie at all, only „Dracula“, and it is surely interesting to see that the director here did the rollerblade stunts herself and it worked because she resembled the lead actress a bit. As for the characters, I already said that I was not the biggest fan of the male lead, but I found the one from the beginning fairly interesting, who is maybe the closest this film has to an antagonist with all his tattoos and how he collects money and treats women/prostitutes. As a consequence, he is also the one who dies first and is killed by the vampire and at that point you could already guess that she mostly picks people as her targets who have a despicable character. You could of course not be too sure after the first killing and when she approaches the boy, you could still think that perhaps she kills randomly as she is indeed a monster, but she lets the kid go and well the homeless guy she kills randomly, but maybe there she was indeed starving and we do not know anything about him and then in the end, she kills the male protagonist’s father and she does not know that the man is her lover’s father. I guess you can call them lovers already at this point. The man eventually finds out she is connected to the crime that happened there when he sees that she is in the company of his cat and that cat once belonged to the male protagonist himself. At the very start, this was the case. Afterwards, nobody really wanted the cat, but it finds a caring owner then in the vampire lady it seems. Maybe the cat also helped her a bit with her loneliness.

The ending is open in a way. We see the male protagonist agrees to drive on with her and does not ask any questions how she got the cat for example. It was a pretty nice shot in the end with the three there in the car. The cat belonged there for sure as well and I loved how it really focused on the camera here and there. Maybe it would have been even better if the music we hear there would have been Lionel Richie indeed, but I guess the director preferred staying on the Iranian path there and they did not want to have the film become too much American. The mention of one of Richie’s songs earlier („Hello, Hello“ and not just one „Hello“?) must have been sufficient. As for the aforementioned final killing of the central male character’s father, this was another act that brought violence, but also prevented it at the same time if you look at what the father is about to do with the prostitute or had started already by giving her this injection, even if she is not unconscious (anymore) a few moments later. Still very despicable and if the tattooed guy early on is not the main antagonist, then you can say it is the father I just mentioned. Even his son has enough towards the end then and the father also starts insulting the cat for no reason. It seems as if he has clearly lost his marbles. It is an okay film to be an animal I assume. The cat survives at least and well we do not know what happens to the fish there in the aquarium. I am not sure if there were any other animals. Well, there was bacon I think that once was an animal. The one thing this film definitely feels like is very indie, very stylistic, but not in a negative way. Actually, in a pretty memorable way. At the same time, I would still say that moments that are truly as outstanding as the title character’s looks are not frequent enough, maybe missing altogether. Don’t get me wrong, this was a good watch from beginning to end, but it did not blow me away.

I also liked that they kept the number of actors (and thus character) pretty low here, so this film could even work as a stage play. Still, it was also a bit confusing then and maybe really too small of a world (the streets were so empty) in which the main female lead kills the male lead’s father unknowingly. In any case, the film reminded me a bit of Sin City looks-wise, in terms of style and atmosphere, but of course the black-and-white aspect contributed a lot there as well. But this is still the movie that came to my mind first when it comes to comparisons. Another thing I remembered was the black-and-white short from the protagonist which is a fashion choice I generally adore. Of course, black-and-white shirt for a black-and-white film is very fitting, even if the moments when we see her topless from the front and from the back are not too shabby either. The vampire component I did not talk too much about, but this is still one of the aspects at the center of the story. Look at ideas how she is asked inside by the tattooed guy at the beginning or how she is not interested in eating hamburgers, probably in eating anything other than blood and maybe she cannot digest it. These were two nice connections to what I consider at this point probably my number-one favorite vampire movie ever, the one from Sweden obviously. One thing we do not find out about is how the woman became a vampire and also we do not now if she is capable of turning others into vampires.

The Dracula occurrence impressed her a bit and surprised her and helped the guy in winning her heart, even if I struggled a bit with this early on and I thought she would kill him too, but then I maybe did not understand right away it was the male lead under the make-up, so overall it is okay she let him live. The comment that he is not gonna hurt her was pretty ironic of course in this situation and how she then pushes him home and they find a way how he can sit in the process was also fairly funny, but at the same time showed us how they can work things out together. In general, this movie does not have a whole lot of comedy though. It is all about the gloominess and dramatic tension (look at the memorable earring scene from the end) here instead and luckily they did not turn it into a comedy. Her hijab when she was potentially about to attack helped as well of course, as if she was an evil nun or something. We have seen evil nuns in other movies. The thumbs-up and positive recommendation for the outcome here were never in doubt and I have to dig deep to find weaknesses here. The only scene I did not like was this strange dance with the black balloon, which was maybe supposed to show us the male lead’s joy for finding somebody he has feelings for? I am not sure, but it could have been left out for all I care. Everything else is quite nice and I am glad I watched this tonight on the big screen, that I still got a ticket when it was almost sold out and also good to see that the room was almost full and many people came to see this not exactly super famous film. Should help in getting theaters to show film in the future, films that are a few years old already and went a bit under the radar as this one surely did. More people should see it and you should be one them. Go for it and also props to Elijah Wood for being a producer here.