Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains, Rome Shandanloo, Milad Eghbali, Reza Sixo Safai, Ray Haratian, Ana Lily Amirpour, Pej Vahdat.
There are some films that may be viewed with the long eyed lens and intrigue and you still will find it hard to justify what about it exactly catches your imagination and the sense of thrill that shimmers down your spine. Then there is the top one percent of the cinematic experiences that really have you salivating at the unknown and wondering why such a film has not been made before.
Whilst Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night might arguable owe much the bleakness offered in F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu or even the social depravity enforced upon Middle Eastern culture by the systematic pillaging of the land by successive governments, foreign bankers and war machines, it hits the cinema goer hard with its starkness and unique expression of modern vampire films.
It is perhaps a simple idea taken and stretched out to the point just before credibility and allusion are shattered, it is the long game in which sound is based purely in what is actually heard and not filtered through with the help of incidental music. Life is after all surface noise, we just add our own soundtrack to it and when you are reminded of this in a film such as A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the weird, odd and unique becomes more apparent.
The residents of Bad City in Iran are being stalked, but not just by any old blood lust crazed being, this is the modern age after all, and in the place of vampires of old stands a veiled assassin but one who you would happily take home to meet your mum and offer a bite to eat to. Skateboarding, socially awkward when confronted by what seems to be the last decent man in Bad City and one whose taking of lives is more in common with social work and helping the oppressed women of the area, The Girl is an anti-hero to those beaten down by make hierarchy and is played to a state of near perfection by Sheila Vand.
Whilst not everything in the film is of towering proportions, the lack of sustainable finish towards the end is one such bug bear, it really is enlightening to believe that film makers such as Ana Lily Amirpour are out there learning their craft and bringing very good cinema from previously unexplored areas.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an enjoyable excursion into the dark side of reality, but one that is tinged with social commentary and guile.
Ian D. Hall