Horror Actressing: Sheila Vand in "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"
Tuesday, July 21, 2020 at 3:49PM by Jason Adams
Watching A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night one's immediate thought might be of a shark, of a Jaws fin splitting the surface, as The Girl (Sheila Vand) skateboards down the inky Iranian streets of Bad Town, her chador trailing behind her like a nighttime tidal-wave no one can escape. A bit of Mephisto in Murnau's Faust too, whose sky-wide wings blot out the sun above that small smoky German village, rooftops only ankle-high, cartoonish and akimbo. There's Caligari brushed over this Bad Town -- the smokestacks and power stations, train cars, flat as a painted flap of cardboard. Sin City Expressionism against which our ageless hunter swerves, preys on all manner of beast, man, fat cat alike.
But there's so much more to The Girl and how Vand brilliantly paints her -- she might be an Instant Icon of Neo-Western Horror but she's also kind of just a girl, standing in front of a boy... asking him to like her. And to drive a white-hot needle through her earlobes. Same diff, in the right boy's hands anyway. Besides the images of soulless monsters that Vand summons up at will she infuses this Girl with Teen Heart, a teenybopper bedroom wall of what's super cool at Sweet Sixteen -- she nudges at cuteness with the tip of her nose, wetly curious.
In that way there's an aura of Eli, the humanity-fascinated succubus that Lina Leandersson so vividly sprung to un-life in 2006's Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In, here as well -- Vand's Girl, for all her shadowy arch-angel posturing, is melancholy want looking for a target; she just needed somebody to offer her a hug, damn it. Director Ana Lily Amirpour has said this film was borne of her own loneliness and Vand, her moody stand-in in voluminously smudged eyeliner, paints nothing sharper than that, her eyes cutting past their spaced-out carnivorous longings to flesh out an even deeper need of the heart, a tremulous half-heard echo of a thump.
Ultimately what became my favorite cinematic compatriot to understand what Vand was mounting here though was when I sussed out the "No-Face" water spirit of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away in her, with a pale white face floating above a billowing lake of black -- No-Face too was threatening, but also misunderstood. See how the both of them offer up handfuls of shiny bling in exchange for connection, at least until a kind soul finally comes through with more? And from there the humanity in that interaction becomes their new choice food -- it's a whole new world with just a little love and understanding to sink one's ancient teeth into.
Reader Comments (5)
ooh i feel i should really watch this one again. loved it at the time and her in it.
Oh man. I fell hard for her when I saw this. Her presence in that basement scene with the disco ball and White Lies playing is up there with Bela Lugosi and Max Schrek
I love this film but have a pet peeve associated with it: So many people seem to think it's an Iranian film. Really? As if this could have been made in Iran. It was shot in the California central valley by a director who's never set foot in Iran--her parents are from Iran, but she was born in the US. Also, they actors are speaking Farsi they learned phonetically. A friend of mine from Iran says it's so bad he had to read the English subtitles to figure out what they were trying to say. That said, and to repeat myself, I do love the movie.
I LOVE this movie so much! Interesting take on the vampire genre. The black and white cinematography is truly great. Though the girl is outstanding I also like Mozhan Marnò. I am hopeful that this strong actress will get bigger parts in the future
Dan H -- I had wondered how good the Farsi was; I'm not surprised to hear what your friend said, I had a feeling. I know all about it being filmed in California -- for some reason when I went to watch it this time I'd thought it was Arizona but I looked up the info on the filming locations again while watching it since it's such a striking location Amirpour found. That said it is SUPPOSED to be set in Iran and it is ABOUT Iran in the political sense -- ALA has said the transgender character we see dancing throughout the film was an intentional dig at Iran's anti-LGBT policies -- so I don't think it's terrible to think of it as "an Iranian film" at least in the abstract sense.