ARTS & CULTURE
Monday, March 9, 2015 19
Film Reviews
» continued from page 11
Amirpour’s unmistakable compositions also
borrow from outside: wide, evocative vistas are
intercut with murky city streets where shadowy figures follow one another. Employing chiaroscuro to
create an unearthed aesthetic, Amirpour boasts an
incredible eye for arrangements, and a wonderful
gift for choreography. A Girl Walks Home Alone at
Night is close to the noir sensibility of Let the Right
One In, and contains the most enthralling bedroom
decor since Emma Watson’s record-dappled walls in
The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
With sparse dialogue, spooky atmosphere, and
a sensationally eclectic score, much of the narrative is conveyed by images alone. Lyle Vincent’s
unrelentingly gorgeous high-contrast monochrome
cinematography gets us almost all the way there;
his black-and-white visuals and stark landscapes
almost frostbitten in their cold clarity. Amirpour is
more concerned with creating memorable tableaux,
which her characters often drift around like kelp in
deep water.
Cryptic and solemnly fatalistic, A Girl Walks
Home Alone at Night is a beguiling and unpredictably funny look at personal desire; about the willful ignorance required to see the best in the people
we love, and sometimes suck on. It creeps up on you
with the nimble powers of its supernatural focus.
With its bloodsucker mentality, jukebox funkiness,
and gender-politics righteousness, it may become
a totem for the hipster world. The expressionist silhouettes, wilted patriarchy, and floating chador
make the whole experience feel forbidden; there’s
something in the nothing.
It’s true that A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
feels more like an elaborate, code-scrambling gesture than the organic statement of a fully-formed
artist, and when all is digested, its strangeness
seems as empty of substance as cotton candy. But
why does it matter? It’s a debut, and it has style,
imagination, and a devil-may-care attitude that’s
insanely alluring, and sometimes spellbinding. And
it’s chic and sophisticated to boot.
Just when you thought you’d seen every possible
variat