[A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT screens Thursday February 5th at 6:45 pm and Sunday February 8th at 8:15 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Bob
Ignizio
Earlier this year, Jim Jarmusch's
vampire film ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE
was released, and a very find film it was. Had Jarmusch chosen to
deal with the undead earlier in his career, and had he been an
Iranian woman instead of a guy from Northeast Ohio, he might well
have come up with something like A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE
instead. Of course that's a simplification; writer/director Ana Lily
Amirpour has her own themes and stylistic touches, but the
similarities to the early work of Jarmusch and other similarly
inclined post-punk indie filmmakers who got their start in the early
eighties are unmistakeable.
The
plot concerns Arash (Arash Marandi), a luckless young man who takes
care of his father Hossein (Marshall Manesh). Hossein is in debt to
local hood Saeed (Dominic Rains) due to his predilection for
prostitues and heroin, and when he can't pay up Saeed takes Arash's
prize possession, his car, instead. Meanwhile a lonesome vampire
(Sheila Vand) walks the streets at night, occasionally feeding but
mostly it seems looking for some sort of human contact. Eventually
she finds it in Arash, and the two kindred spirits ponder the
possibilities of leaving “Bad City” and all the bad things in it
behind for the open road and the unknown.
Despite
one of the main characters being a vampire, it would be a mistake to
call this a horror film. Generating fright is an afterthought at most
here. Rather this is a movie about two outsiders finding each other
and trying to find their place in the world, if such a place even
exists. Along the way it also finds time to look at issues of gender
and social inequality without stopping the movie dead in its tracks.
The plot is kind of minimal and there's not a ton of action, but
there's plenty of atmosphere and attitude and gorgeous black and
white cinematography to go around, not to mention a killer
soundtrack, and in this case that's more than enough. 4 out of 4
stars.
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