A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Dec. 2nd, 2018 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerBack from my trip! Way behind on movie reviews! I watched this one like two weeks ago and yet only now am I getting this review out. Better late than never, right?
***
How to describe Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night? A modern film noir, a low-key vampire tale, a fantastical echo of modern Iran (filmed in California, but all the actors speak Farsi), a feminist fairy tale, a romance?
It’s all these things all wrapped up in stylish black-and-white cinematography. The lights are sharply angled; the shadows cast are long and velvet dark. The Girl rides her skateboard down the darkened streets, her chador fluttering behind her in as she passes under the streetlights. Even her shirt is striped in black and white, like a French mime’s; and there’s an echo of France, too, in her bob and her big eyes, like the heroine in Amelie.
(Maybe there’s some French New Wave influence here - as if there weren’t enough influences on this film already? I don’t know enough about the New Wave to tell. Or Iranian film, for that matter. There’s a lot going on here.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We don’t start with the Girl at all, but with Arash. He’s dressed like Marlon Brando or James Dean: tight white t-shirt, tight jeans, that fluffy pompadour that gives him both bad boy glamor and a hint of softness - vulnerability. When we first meet him, he’s climbing out of a decaying building carrying a rescued kitten.
The Girl, meanwhile, begins as little more than a shadow - a chador-clad shape in the distance. We first catch a glimpse of her in the side mirror of the car where a local drug dealer and pimp is getting it on with a prostitute. He seems so unnerved by the vision - one second there, and then gone! - that he throws the prostitute out without paying her.
The next time the Girl sees him, she gets him to invite her back to his apartment - a simple matter of gazing at him with those big eyes; she never speaks. Once they’re safe from prying eyes, she drains his blood, grabs a handful of valuables (these she’ll try to give to the prostitute later, in lieu of the payment he denied), and leaves his corpse behind. She’s a scourge on men who mistreat women - when she’s not busy listening to records and practicing on her newly-acquired skateboard.
For long parts of the film she’s silent, but this never keeps her from expressing herself: her taste in music, her expressive eyes, her endearingly tentative beginnings on the skateboard that slowly grow toward confidence - all these things speak.
The movie’s nearly halfway over before they meet. Arash, high out of his gourd, has just stumbled out of a costume party - dressed, of course, as Dracula. He’s stumbling through the dark streets in his high-collared cape, only to stop because he sees, in the streetlamps halfway down the street - is that another Dracula?
But no. It’s the Girl, her chador hanging loose around her shoulders. I wonder if this image is the seed from which the movie grew: the echo between that black chador and Dracula’s iconic cape.
***
I counted up the movies I've watched for my project this year and realized I'm at 94, so clearly I need to make it an even hundred this month.
***
How to describe Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night? A modern film noir, a low-key vampire tale, a fantastical echo of modern Iran (filmed in California, but all the actors speak Farsi), a feminist fairy tale, a romance?
It’s all these things all wrapped up in stylish black-and-white cinematography. The lights are sharply angled; the shadows cast are long and velvet dark. The Girl rides her skateboard down the darkened streets, her chador fluttering behind her in as she passes under the streetlights. Even her shirt is striped in black and white, like a French mime’s; and there’s an echo of France, too, in her bob and her big eyes, like the heroine in Amelie.
(Maybe there’s some French New Wave influence here - as if there weren’t enough influences on this film already? I don’t know enough about the New Wave to tell. Or Iranian film, for that matter. There’s a lot going on here.)
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We don’t start with the Girl at all, but with Arash. He’s dressed like Marlon Brando or James Dean: tight white t-shirt, tight jeans, that fluffy pompadour that gives him both bad boy glamor and a hint of softness - vulnerability. When we first meet him, he’s climbing out of a decaying building carrying a rescued kitten.
The Girl, meanwhile, begins as little more than a shadow - a chador-clad shape in the distance. We first catch a glimpse of her in the side mirror of the car where a local drug dealer and pimp is getting it on with a prostitute. He seems so unnerved by the vision - one second there, and then gone! - that he throws the prostitute out without paying her.
The next time the Girl sees him, she gets him to invite her back to his apartment - a simple matter of gazing at him with those big eyes; she never speaks. Once they’re safe from prying eyes, she drains his blood, grabs a handful of valuables (these she’ll try to give to the prostitute later, in lieu of the payment he denied), and leaves his corpse behind. She’s a scourge on men who mistreat women - when she’s not busy listening to records and practicing on her newly-acquired skateboard.
For long parts of the film she’s silent, but this never keeps her from expressing herself: her taste in music, her expressive eyes, her endearingly tentative beginnings on the skateboard that slowly grow toward confidence - all these things speak.
The movie’s nearly halfway over before they meet. Arash, high out of his gourd, has just stumbled out of a costume party - dressed, of course, as Dracula. He’s stumbling through the dark streets in his high-collared cape, only to stop because he sees, in the streetlamps halfway down the street - is that another Dracula?
But no. It’s the Girl, her chador hanging loose around her shoulders. I wonder if this image is the seed from which the movie grew: the echo between that black chador and Dracula’s iconic cape.
***
I counted up the movies I've watched for my project this year and realized I'm at 94, so clearly I need to make it an even hundred this month.
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