A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (15)

USA 2014  101 mins  Dir: Ana Lily Amirpour  Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Mozhan Marnò, Dominic Rains

Iranian films tend to be received rapturously by western critics, largely, one suspects, out of sympathy  for the country’s auteurs, who labour under intolerably heavy censorship and face draconian punishment should they fall foul of the authorities. It feels almost churlish to observe that many of these movies are very, very boring indeed – think, for example, of Abbas Kiarstami’s signature exceedingly lengthy shot of a car filmed from a great distance as it trundles down a dusty road.

Connoisseurs of this stuff who anticipate another solidarity snoozeathon from first-time director Ana Lily Amirpour should be warned that within the first 15 minutes we’re introduced to a motley bunch of ‘hos, junkies and thieves and witness a pimp receiving a vigorous blow-job. And that’s before the enigmatic lady vampire starts feasting. Needless to say, although A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is set in the fictional Iranian Bad City, where everyone speaks Farsi, it was actually shot in Bakersfield, California, with an ex-pat cast.

Not unlike Frank Miller’s rather more stylised Sin City, Bad City’s ne’er-do-well denizens lead sleazy lives that occasionally intersect. Rebellious, bequiffed, drug-dealing yoof Arash (Marandi) drives a vintage Ford Thunderbird and seems to have modelled himself on James Dean. He lives with his junkie father Hossein (Manesh), who’s heavily in debt to fearsome, tattooed pimp Saeed (Rains) and is a regular customer of his solitary, aging prostitute (Marnò). Then there’s the mysterious unnamed girl (Vand), who stalks the streets on her skateboard and is swiftly revealed to be a vampire (though the term is never used). She and Arash occasionally cross paths, but the meet-cute, as it would be termed if this were a romcom, occurs when pilled-up Arash staggers home from a party dressed as Dracula, complete with plastic pointy teeth.

Amirpour’s influences are primarily US indie ones, notably Jim Jarumsch and David Lynch. She conjures up a magpie pop culture patchwork, taking in spaghetti westerns and ’80s music, and is clearly more interested in mood and tone than plot. That may come as something of a disappointment to those hoping for a feast of bloodsucking with an exotic twist. Indeed, it’s all rather achingly hipster cool, which gets a bit wearing when the gossamer-thin story fizzles out and the characters resort to meaningful silences. But the film benefits from striking monochrome cinematography and a suitably dreamlike depopulated industrial setting, where fields of oil pumps pound away symbolically. Sheila Vand, who had a small but significant role in Argo, gives great Jean Seberg-esque vampire, her chador billowing behind her like a Victorian gentleman’s cloak as she skateboards through the night. A special mention must also go to the film’s cat wrangler, who coaxes a remarkably relaxed performance from Vand and Marandi’s feline co-star, especially during the final scene.