A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is a film about a girl who haunts walks the streets of a ghost town city in Iran. "The Girl," as she is called throughout the film, is an adolescent living the lonely vampire life. She watches over the city and feeds off the blood of misogynistic men. The setting takes place in a fictional city, "Bad City," in Iran. The film was shot in California. Themes I found in the film include the following: individualism, social class/social mobility, superficiality/materialism, intellectualism , and the power of inclinations and desires as a form of agency.Ana Lily Amirpour, claims that her film has no political nor feminist agenda; this denying of polemics is a topic discussed in class vis-à- vis director Dai Sijie (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress) and Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis). Amirpour claims that the audience tends to see themselves and their beliefs in films and creative works which is why she refuses to label or convey a single interpretation of her work. The film is a representation of the filmmaker, this was similar to the idea that behind every book is a person and their beliefs (Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). Many have labeled her film as feminist for her portrayal of non traditional, strong, female roles. The characters are complex and mult-ifacted and allow us to question their choices and their moralities. The director will also be releasing a comic based off the film.
"The Girl," Sheila Vand's character, is a young adult who feeds off the blood junkies and men who dehumanize women by using them as sexual objects. Her first victim is a misogynist gangster/drug dealer who has the word "sex" tatted on his throat. Throughout the film, the women help each other and remind each other of who they are, who they want to be, and who they can be.
Amirpour is of Iranian heritage. She was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in California, United States. The film is considered to be Iranian-American; the characters speak Farsi to portray the Iranian setting, yet the film was shot in California. This fusion of nationalities resembles the fusion of genres of the film, such as noir, western, and thriller. It is very similar to cult classic films such as Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill both directed by Quentin Tarantino. This intermix of nationalities reminded me of films like Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie), Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi), and Games of Love and Chance (Abdellatif Kechiche).
Naturalism, a literary period we discussed in class vis-à-vis Thérèse Raquin by Èmile Zola, concerns the physiological makings of a person and how their genetics determine their actions. The Girl is a vampire and her natural inclination is to kill in order to survive off the blood of her victims. The character needs to carry out her inclinations, it is a part of her being. This idea represents the idea that the desire or inclination to do something is justified by the naturalist idea that we are our a product of our genetics and we only have the power to do what we can do and what we are born into. Another comparison to Zola's is the Girl as representation of an anti-heroic character, similar character of Thérèse. A final similarity is the use of cats (François in Zola's work) as watchers who see the bad deeds. Houssein, father of Arash in Amirpour's film, claims that the cat is watching him and is Arash's dead mother; the fear of the cat as a spy of reincarnation of a dead partner is also seen in Zola's Thérèse Raquin, Laurent fears that the cat knows that they killed Camille.
The vampire rides a skateboard and likes to listen to punk/rock/indie music. The use of music as an escape sets the melancholic mood of the film. It is through music that Arash, lead male, and the Girl develop a relationship. Their relationship isn't one of sexual or lustful desire but rather innocent and romantic, this is shown in the scene in which she changes her clothes but Arash looks away and respects her as an individual. The somber tones of the music in scenes of the Girl in her room match the solitude life of a vampire. This ties into the teen/youth culture seen in Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Both characters in both films are very similar, into punk/rock music. They both use either a veil or chador (represents Iranian customs for women) and both have bedroom dancing scenes. The veil in Persepolis is symbol of oppression, but in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night the chador is a Dracula-esque cape that gives the character power.