Butler's Cinema Scene

“A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT” My rating: B+ 

99 minutes | No MPAA rating

How the hell did this movie ever get made in Iran?

That’s what I found myself asking about 10 minutes into the evocative, eerie, totally mesmerizing “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” a vampire movie unlike any we’ve seen before.

As it turns out, “A Girl Walks Home…” wasn’t made in Iran. Oh, it’s in Farsi (the language of Iran) and the cars bear Iranian license plates and the principal players were born in Iran.  Plus, the lead character wears a chador, the long cape-like garment that is more or less required of women in female-phobic Iran.

But Ana Lily Amirpour’s Sundance-sponsored debut feature was actually shot near Bakersfield, CA. Which explains how it can dish nudity, drug abuse, lurid violence, and a huge shot of slow-simmering sexuality — topics the Iranian morality police would never countenance.

Their loss. This is a terrific film, not so much for its narrative (which deals mostly in suggestion) as for the haunting atmosphere it evokes.

Arash Maradi as the James Dean-ish gardener

The setting is Bad City, a sort of industrial backwater filled with eternally rocking oil pumps, lots of sand, a few palm trees and nondescript buildings.

We are first introduced to Arash (Arash Maradi), who with his jeans, white T, shades and pompadour looks like he’s up for the role of James Dean.

Arash works as a gardener for rich folks and their spoiled children, but his meager income cannot begin to pay for the drug habit of his sad, widowed father (Marshall Manesh). The old man is deep in debt to Saeed (Dominic Rains), a tattooed dealer who seizes Arash’s prized vintage Ford T-Bird  as payment.

The film briefly shifts to the swaggering Saeed, who deals not only in drugs but in female flesh.  Or he does until he comes across The Girl (Sheila Vand), a big-eyed, emotionally inert young woman whom he takes to his apartment with the intention of…well, something unpleasant.

But the thug gets much more than he bargained for.  When Arash discovers Sayeed’s corpse, he collects the dealer’s cash and stash with the intention of getting into a new line of business.

The heart of “A Girl Walks Home…” is the relationship that develops between Arash and The Girl, who only goes out at night and always wears the ankle-length black chador that leaves only her pale face exposed.  At one point she commandeers a skateboard from a street urchin and thereafter glides her way through the darkened streets, looking as though she has levitated with her chador flapping out behind her like a bat’s wings.

Sheila Vand as The Girl

Arash knows practically nothing about this woman, but he’s helplessly drawn to her.  In the film’s most erotically charged scene, he presents her with a pair of stolen earrings and she allows him to pierce her lobes with a safety pin so that she can wear them. I know, that doesn’t sound terribly sexy…but weirdly enough it’s about the hottest thing I’ve seen in movies in ages.

Amirpour fleshes out her bare-bones yarn with a variety of oddball digressions.  In the shelter of her cellar apartment, The Girl removes her chador to reveal a short haircut that makes her look distinctively modern.  And she bops around listening to ’80s American pop — her walls are decorated with old album covers.

But then “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” is filled with delicious stuff, from Lyle Vincent’s splendid black-and-white cinematography to the timeless feel of the setting and an eclectic soundtrack that samples everything from electronic droning to spaghetti Western twang and deejay-driven house music.

This is an art film down to its toenails — those expecting the usual vampire conventions will be disappointed. But Amirnpour has created a world so full of fascination, dread and sensuality that you don’t want the experience to end.

| Robert W. Butler