A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night 2014

[7.3/10] A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is slow. Very slow. Sometimes that works to its advantage. I am a fan of longer takes and letting the energy of a scene unspool gradually rather than chopping things up with a host of fast cuts. There’s some intimate, even painful moments here that are made all the more powerful through the time writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour takes to let them breathe.

But in other times it just drags. Even good scenes can leave you looking at your watch waiting for the film to move on. It’s a movie that’s heavy on mood and light on incident. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Amirpour lets the audience drink in this little corner of the world and this peculiar situation without burdening it with the need for a lot of momentum or narrative progression. The catch is that the more languid stretches, when such progress is slow and the mood is all but sopped up, can become trying.

That said, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night never ceases to be utterly gorgeous to look at. Amirpour and director of photography Lyle Vincent craft some of the most brilliant modern black and white cinematography in ages. There is, appropriately for a vampire movie, a real focus on the contrast of light and dark in the visuals. Cloaked figures emerge in the distance backed by a blinding light. Smoke rises in the distance of an industrial town, cloaking an erstwhile quiet neighborhood with an eerie glow. The titular girl swings and sways to the music in an ethereal way amid posters and attire that ultimately pop like a messy chessboard. Whatever the film lacks in storytelling, it counterbalances with stunning aesthetics.

In the same vein, the movie is also a sonic treat. The score and soundtrack here perfectly compliment the unhurried pace of the film. From sensual groove-worthy numbers to Persian indie rock to more melodic and electronic backtracks, sometimes A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night works best as a music video, using the tonal waves and well-crafted images to communicate a particular emotion or feeling much better than the film’s able to do the same for story or character.

In truth, the characters here are mostly archetypes. The Girl is deliberately flat in her affect, possessing a sense of justice and connection but seemingly overcoming a certain immortal detachment that’s hard to shed. Arash, her working class beau, is an ersatz James Dean type, protective of his automotive toy, possessed of a heart of gold, but rough around the edges. The other figures, from Arash’s junky dad to a scuzzy local drug kingpin to a young kid who plays Greek Chorus are lightly-sketched at best. The player here with the most layers is Atti, a prostitute who has more complex wants and complicated needs than any of the other characters put together.

Still, that often works, given that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is more a movie about the sensation of a given scene or held moment than about deep introspection. It’s also a romance, between the titular girl and Arash. We don’t see many conversations between them, and the ones we do are short on words. But we do see them take a certain unspoken comfort in one another, that comes in opportunities to bite an unsuspecting admirer or take a lover to task for the lost that are allowed to pass.
The truth is that this isn’t much of a vampire movie. The Girl’s fangs do set plenty of important details into motion, like the death of the drug dealer whose leftovers give Arash a new lease on life, or the protection of Atti from Arash’s dad that complicates things for everyone. But aside from that slow-spun killing of that kingpin and one good fright for the little boy, this film is light on scares. If you’re looking for more traditional horror, you should look elsewhere,

Instead, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night feels more cut from the standard indie drama cloth. There’s the mix between something assuredly modern that’s nonetheless indebted to a certain throwback vibe. There’s the long shots that seem to scream cool and messy at the same time. Even the choice to film everything in high contrast black and white, one of the defter choices the movie’s creative team makes, has a certain traditional independent film vibe to it.

But that also lends the film a certain pastiche quality, seeming to borrow a bit from French New Wave, a bit from Quentin Tarantino, and a bit from 1950s small town rebel movies. The mix can make for an odd fit at times, but when those elements work together in stretches, the film can be utterly mesmerizing.

The catch is that the disparate pieces of the movie don’t always amount to a greater whole. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly Amirpour is trying to say here, or what the arc of The Girl or Arash is over the course of the film. There’s some of the usual horror romance tropes of misfits finding solace in one another and the comfort in rocky times that comes from unexpected places. And yet, again, the movie is more concerned with crafting cool moody sequences than tying them to something clearer and more piercing.

In brief, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night often plays like a case of style over substance. But the style is so good, between the captivating black-and-white imagery that Amirpour puts on offer, to the mind-massaging melodies that help the film float through extended sequences, to some quality facial expressions and uses of body language, that you’re willing to forgive it. (And that’s before you see so much focus put onto a pretty adorable little feline.) The downside is that sometimes the measured cadence of the picture becomes too enervating, even exhausting, making those emotional high points and engrossing moods harder and harder to sustain. It’s a cool, different sort of vampire movie, but too much of it can still suck the life out of you.