SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

RipDelight This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Claire Goodsell Watched this on TV a few nights ago. My Film 2016 book gave it 4 stars & said it was great. What a disappointment. Although I liked the monochrome filming it was a simple story with not much script. I began to lose interest part way through & fast-forwarded most of second half. The abrupt ending didn't help. Perhaps I missed the point of it? My advice: give it a miss or if you do watch it don't have high expectations.

Steven Wyatt Only cinema can do this. Only cinema can depict a Persian vampire- woman in a chador skateboarding down a lamplit street and make it work, can make it surreal and stunning and totally germane to the plot. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is full of such moments, full of gratuitous genius, black humour and cinematic magic.Filmed in monochrome, the minimalist dialogue in subtitled Farsi, the action takes place in 'Bad City', Bakersfield Ca. standing in for Iran. Our hero is Arash (Arash Marandi), a James Dean wannabe with a flash American car he explains took him 2,191 working days (exactly six years including one leap year) to buy. Arash dutifully cares for his ageing, heroin-addicted father, who owes money to a ferally abusive pimp and drug dealer played with evil gusto by Dominic Rains. The dealer takes Arash's treasured automobile in part payment of the father's drug debts. In a vast, bleak night space of almost Soviet immensity, Rains's character treats one of his prostitutes with laconic cruelty, abusing her and ejecting her from Arash's car. She sobs on the ground. Watching from a distance is a silent sentinel, nun-like in her chador, the Girl Who Walks Home Alone At Night.Named only as 'The Girl' in the credits, this is Sheila Vand's avenging dark angel. 'I have done bad things,' she tells Arash further down the story. 'I am bad.' She brings herself wordlessly to the pimp's attention, meeting his eyes with an impassive sadism reminiscent of Rooney Mara's character in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. In his cocaine-fuelled hubris he takes her home. It does not end well for him.Arash, now travelling by bicycle, goes to his work as a gardener and handyman. 'Shaydah the Princess', the daughter of the house where he is working, is a flirtatious, spoiled little rich girl, chatting mindlessly on her cellphone and assessing the result of her rhinoplasty in the mirror. He spots her jewelled earrings on the dresser and gives way to temptation. He wants his car back. He takes the earrings to the pimp's house, arriving just as The Girl is leaving.Inside, he discovers the pimp's mutilated, blood-drained body. On the coffee table is a briefcase stuffed with cash and drugs. He empties it, takes his car keys, and flees.One more scene remains to round off the film's characterisations. The Girl confronts a skateboarding boy, repeatedly demanding -- her face twisted with passion and menace -- 'Are you a good boy? Are you?' She will be watching him, she threatens; she will rip out his eyes and feed them to the dogs if he transgresses. The terrified boy runs away, leaving his skateboard.Arash, driving his reclaimed and beloved car, arrives at a costume party dressed as Count Dracula, his pockets stuffed with the pimp's drugs and cash. Shaydah is there with her friend the 'Skeleton Party Girl', actually a cameo role played by the film's writer and director Ana Lily Amirpour. Drugs are taken. Arash, rejected by Shaydah, finds himself in the street, tripping, lost in Bad City. He is staring at a street lamp, entranced by the light, when The Girl comes skateboarding past.If all stories are ultimately about the search for love, here is the central dynamic of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. Under the street light is Arash, the holy innocent, dressed up for a party as the vampire Dracula. Into his life comes The Girl, a genuine vampire killer, on a skateboard. Light Angel and Dark Angel are brought together in a bizarre, comic coincidence. How will this play out?No backstory is given for The Girl, no explanation of how she became who and what she is. We are left to assume that it is something primally dark. Yet something in the character of Arash touches her, something that softens her hard and murderous heart. And something in her draws Arash. Their instinctive, developing symbiosis is brilliantly symbolised by a scene in which he pierces her ears with a safety pin in order to present her with the diamond earrings he stole from Shaydah. She accepts the pain, she accepts the jewels, she accepts the proffered love. The vampire-woman is not tamed -- you can never see that happening -- but she is shown a new and different life beyond the blighted, heartless wasteland of Bad City.Amirpour has created a masterpiece of atmosphere and vision, aided and underpinned by an eclectic soundtrack of mingled Western and Persian pop. The backdrop is nominally Iran, actually California, a setting which in itself produces an austere, strangely familiar Everyplace -- the landscape of the lost soul -- where cruelty, selfishness and existential absurdity besiege from all quarters the simple human longing for Love. There are recurring moments of crazy beauty. The editing could have been a little tighter, which is why I give A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night nine stars instead of a faultless 10. But that is a quibble; every character, every performance, burns into the memory. Amirpour's writing and directing creates a world where the outlandish becomes more real than the superficial 'reality' we inhabit in our daily lives. Once again, only cinema can do this. Breathtaking.

Scarecrow-88 I realize there will be those that gripe that this begs for legitimacy by being filmed in B&W and using catchy music with faces aching "sigh" as they move through their Iranian urban existence alone and without. If this is a reason to be dismissive so be it, but I'll take something so beautifully photographed, small in the scope of a certain sect of characters within a specific environment but visually written in painterly strokes to get the most out of the setting. A heroin junkie father who has left his son struggling to make ends meet, losing a nice ride he saved so long for to a sleazy drug dealing creep looking for payment for the debt of the smack provided to pops. A lovely vampire in a chador with penetrating eyes and enigmatic presence eyes human meals considered worth feeding from, leaving them for dead because they seemingly represent the scum of society, finds her possible soulmate in the heroin junkie's son. The street lights gleaming piercing white, haloing the characters as they haunt the empty sidewalks and roads at night. The vampire becoming smitten with this misbegotten young man absent a parent with his mother gone and the father surrendered to his addiction. Catching the guy as he was seduced by a popular girl of privilege during a costume party to take an X pill, which sends him into an exhilarating trip, under the influence with his inhibitions lowered, dressed in cape as Dracula, the vampire finds him alluring. Great scene has her pondering whether or not to bite him as his throat was available, this realization that he could be her *one* stilling the urge for another drink. The foreground/background composition between the vampire, in chador, and the heroin junkie father, who she is following across the street; this has the aesthetic of a true talent. The kid with the skateboard running across the vampire with her asking if he's been a good boy, threatening him is an instance where we see the predator surveying her potential prey. The seductive face of the rich beauty who is forbidden to the junkie's son, looking like a siren calling to him as he lingers in his drug-influenced daze, only for an attempted kiss to be denied. He is not in her social standing, no matter if he's dreamy and attractive to her. The film is a romance wrapped in the art house disguise of a vampire film.

CinemaClown A calm, alluring & subversive art-house endeavour from Ana Lily Amirpour in what's her feature film debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is as impressive as it is unconventional, as beautiful as it is brooding, and as hypnotic as it is haunting. Touted as "the first Iranian vampire western", it is a fascinating blend of horror, romance & western that's original, meditative & masterly composed.Set in an Iranian ghost-town that reeks of death & loneliness, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night tells the story of a lonesome vampire that wanders the desolate streets at night; stalking, killing or protecting whoever she deems fit. But things change when she comes across a guy who's just as lost as her and, in an effort to connect with each other, something beautiful is born between the two.Written & directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is crafted with stunning restraint & presents the up-n-coming filmmaker in absolute control of her craft. Lily Amirpour's direction exudes both patience & confidence as she spins her own take on the vampire folklore with this twisted fable of two lost souls without giving in to genre conventions, and isn't afraid to employ silence as a powerful & effective tool.For a debut feature, it is an incredibly sophisticated effort, and Lily Amirpour not only exhibits her firm grip on storytelling elements but all filmmaking aspects. The story takes place in Bad City, an Iranian town in the middle of nowhere, and the deserted locations, vacant streets & fraction of denizens add to its graveyard like aura while the resurfacing shots of drilling pumps perpetually sucking oil out of Earth serves as an interesting companion to its vampiric themes.The script is only concerned with the doings of two characters, Arash & The Girl, and the rest of the town's inhabitants are discerned by simple tags assigned to them. What's also admirable is that it is never in a hurry to switch to the next moment and actually embraces the silence & emptiness that permeates every frame, which in turn contributes to its somber tone & funereal gloominess. But there are also times when its extended takes bring the narrative to a standstill.Shot in crisp black-n-white, Cinematography brings an elusive quality to the whole picture with its static camera-work, skillful use of slow-mo technique & beautifully composed shots, and further intensifies its otherworldly setting. Another one of my favourite aspects is its mesmerising soundtrack, comprising of sensibly chosen tracks that are evocative and always in check with the emotional requirements of any given moment.Coming to the performances, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night features a committed cast in Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Mozhan Marnò, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains & Rome Shadanloo, and each one of them get sufficient time on screen. Vand's subtle expressions & unwavering gaze turns her silent showcase into the most impressive performance in the movie and she is brilliantly supported by the rest of the cast, each playing their part with utmost conviction.On an overall scale, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a somber effort that's elegiac in its approach, dreamlike in its presentation, and subdued in its addressing of topical themes. Crafted with care & intimacy, it promises an etherial, absorbing & aesthetically fulfilling experience to those willing to embrace its slow-burn narrative and marks a promising start to Ana Lily Amirpour's filmmaking career. Although its fangs aren't as deeply embedded as I would have liked, this thoughtful meditation on loneliness is still a delightful discovery that's worthy of a broader audience.