Film review: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

Watched this one because it's leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of March.  What to say about it?  It's certainly unique.  It's shot like a cross between Night of the Hunter and Cat People (which is very high praise, as both are masterpieces), which is to say that the blacks are all velvety and the shadows endless, but has the episodic feel of an early Jim Jarmusch (e.g. Stranger Than Paradise).  It's in Persian, and most of the characters (all but very minor bit players) are Iranian, but it looks like somewhere in the Valley, and apart from the sort of Chador-cowl that the titular main character wears when she's out and about (although, she wears it like a superhero would wear her cape), nobody's dress looks especially Iranian.  (But then, what do I know?)  Certainly the main male character, Arash, who is unfeasibly beautiful,

dresses like an extra from The Wild One.

Plus, of course, the main character is a vampire, and there is some extremely Morricone-ish music, along with a lot of pop music (and Twin Peaks-esque drawn-out scenes of characters putting on music and swaying gently to it for what seems like hours).  So definitely style coming out of its ears.  But is it nothing but style?  No: it's oddly moving.  Like Let the Right One In, the central relationship is doomed but still romantic.  And, given how silly this could come off as, everybody in it is very good.  The main actor (simply billed as "the girl") has an astonishing face with the most soulful eyes you've ever seen

(which is good, because they do most of the talking).  She also manages to be very scary when she needs to - and there are a couple of scenes that remind one of the Bus Stop scene in Cat People in a good way.  And there's a beautiful scene of her skateboarding down an empty street at night with her cape flowing out behind her that has no right to work as well as it does.  All in all: I recommend it highly.  There are some who will find its pace glacial.  But if you have any romance in your soul you will nor be one of them.  I just wish it had been around when I was a teenager, it would probably have been my favorite movie.  It certainly should be the date movie for every young Goth.

This probably won't mean much to most people, but in scenes like the one above, where she just appears as a sinister shape in the near distance, she reminded me of The Groke, who has a similar sad but sinister affect.