Line #1 Film/AGirlWalksHomeAloneAtNight


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a4afe8b49c20d5f9cfade10d13ddf5d3.jpg]]
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3	''A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night'' is the 2014 first feature film of Iranian-American writer/directer Ana Lily Amirpour. It's a film about vampires, prostitution, teenage angst, and drug use.
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5	The film takes place in [[WretchedHive Bad City]], a fictional hellhole in Iran. A young man named [[NiceGuy Arash]] (Arash Marandi) is trying to get by while taking care of his [[AddledAddict heroin-addict father Hossein]] (Marshall Manesh), all the while being harrased by pimp/drug-dealer Saeed (Dominic Rains). Eventually, he resorts to [[StickyFingers stealing a pair of earrings]] in order to pay Saeed back and reclaim his beloved car. While waiting for Saeed by the gate, he sees a girl in a black [[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chador chador]] (Creator/SheilaVand) leaving his apartment. This mysterious girl enjoys skateboarding, listening to music, and [[BreadEggsMilkSquick killing the bad men of Bad City]]...
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7	----
8	!!Tropes featured in ''A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night'' include:
9	* AddledAddict: Hossein is sick on heroin, although he has a few lucid scenes.
10	* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Each character seems to exemplify a different time period in their clothing and demeanor: The Girl, with her striped shirt, short hair, and love of records, seems either a '60s or contemporary hipster; Arash has his '50s [[GreaserDelinquents Greaser]] thing going on; Saeed is an '80s GangBanger; Atti looks like she walked out of the 1930s, etc. The actual set looks modern, with oil drills and powerplants in the background.
11	* AlmostKiss: When the Girl takes Arash home, she gets very close to kissing him, but doesn't. ''Then'' she looks like she's about to bite him, but doesn't do that either.
12	* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Saeed is an obnoxious loan shark, pimp, and drug dealer, and Hossein was killed by the Girl immediately after he tied Atti up and forcibly injected her with heroin.]]
13	* [[BadassCape Badass Chador]]: Director Ana Lily Amirpour has stated that a major inspiration for the film was throwing on a black chador like the Girl's in the film and realizing how cool it looked.
14	* BilingualBonus: Bad, as in Bad City, has the same meaning in both English and Persian.
15	* BriefcaseFullOfMoney: After the Girl kills [[spoiler:Saeed, Arash]] finds a briefcase of money and drugs in his flat and [[spoiler:uses it to rather half-heartedly set himself up as a dealer]].
16	* CoolCar: Arash's 1957 Ford Thunderbird, which gets seized by Saeed to pay Hossein's debts.
17	* CreatorCameo: Director and writer Ana Lily Amirpour also plays Shirin, the girl in skeleton facepaint at the party. Additionally, she does all the long and mid-distance shots of the Girl actually skateboarding, as Sheila Vand couldn't skate. There's also a picture of her on the wall in the Girl's apartment.
18	* CreatorThumbprint: Heavily tattooed men, scenes of the protagonist getting high at a party, and skateboards all feature in Amirpour's later film ''The Bad Batch'' too.
19	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: Shot in stark black-and-white, despite the heavy red used in marketing.
20	* DisposableVagrant: A random rough sleeper is the second man who the Girl kills for their blood, and the only one who isn't an AssholeVictim.
21	* DoesNotLikeMen: The Girl kills three men in the film, two of whom were actively abusive to the same woman, and never harms or threatens a woman. The only man she seems to like is Arash, who is tender to her.
22	* EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette: The Girl. Fitting, as she is a vampire.
23	* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: While the relationship is not without tension, she appears to enjoy a courtship with Arash.
24	* {{Fingore}}: The Girl bites off [[spoiler:Saeed's]] finger before draining him.
25	* FeelingYourHeartbeat: Featured in the climax of an early scene where The Girl takes an inebriated Arash home, and they listen to music together in her room. The scene is a silent [[TheOner oner]] which at face value looks like a teenage MeetCute scene, [[DramaticIrony but the important context is that unbeknownst to Arash]], the Girl is [[OurVampiresAreDifferent a vampire]] who's [[VampireBitesSuck already been shown killing someone for their blood]]. The direction of the scene makes it look like she's to lean into his face for a kiss ([[AlmostKiss which she doesn't]]), before gazing at his neck for a bite ([[PetTheDog which she doesn't]]), finally settling on resting her head on his chest, quietly listening to his heartbeat.
26	* FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire: Downplayed. The Girl isn't a good person, but she definitely favors {{Asshole Victim}}s as prey and is polite and kind to people who aren't her food.
27	* LarynxDissonance: While intimidating the Urchin, the Girl's voice becomes inhumanly gravelly and demonic.
28	* LoanShark: Saeed sells Hossein drugs on credit and seizes Arash's car to pay for the interest.
29	* MaleGaze: Despite how she appears modestly-covered in a chador for most of the movie, we do get to see Sheila Vand's bare chest during her bathing scene. Much later, near the end of the movie, she also provides us with a combined variant of ShouldersUpNudity and ToplessnessFromTheBack.
30	* MirrorRoutine: The Girl taunts Hossein by doing this to him while stalking him in the street.
31	* MushroomSamba: Arash is shown disoriented after being given ecstasy at a club.
32	* NinjaPirateZombieRobot:
33	** It was marketed as "the first Iranian vampire western".
34	** The Girl is a skateboarding Iranian vampire.
35	* NoNameGiven: Neither the Girl nor the Urchin are ever named.
36	* OurVampiresAreDifferent: She wears a chador and rides a skateboard.
37	* OutlawCouple: [[spoiler:The Girl and Arash leave town to do this in the end, even though he knows that she killed his father.]]
38	* PetTheDog: The Girl [[spoiler: talking to Atti about her disillusionment in Bad City. It also seems she tried to give Atti jewels to help fund her escape.]]
39	* PlasticBitch: Shaydah, the snobbish and unpleasant daughter of Arash's employers, has a bandage over her nose implying that she's just had work done to it.
40	* RichBitch: Shaydah, whose family employ Arash as a gardener[=/=]handyman, who is implied to have just had a nose job at the start of the film, gets high at fancy costume parties and patronisingly flirts with Arash.
41	* ScareEmStraight: The Girl employs this with the Urchin. After repeatedly asking him “Are you a good boy?” (to which he answers yes, with increasing lack of conviction), she reveals her vampire form to him and threatens to pluck his eyeballs from his skull and feed them to the dogs before telling him to “Be a good boy” and saying she’ll be watching him for the rest of his life.
42	* TheSchlubPubSeductionDeduction: As soon as the Girl lets Saeed pick her up and take her home, you know where things are going. Subverted when she finds Arash high and confused in the street, takes him back to her flat, and doesn't harm him.
43	* {{Streetwalker}}: Atti has fallen into this line of work.
44	* TattooedCrook: Saeed, the pimp, moneylender, and drug dealer, is covered with tattoos in both Roman and Arabic script. A FreezeFrameBonus reveals he also has a tattoo of Pac-Man heading for a mug of beer.
45	* ThrewMyBikeOnTheRoof: The Girl bullies the Urchin so that she can take his skateboard.
46	* TooDumbToLive: [[spoiler:Saeed, who '''still''' thinks it'd be smart to seduce The Girl despite the fact '''she just sprouted fangs'''. It takes him losing a finger to realize this]].
47	* TruthInTelevision: Even without a vampire’s super strength, biting off someone’s finger is about as easy as biting into a baby carrot. (The reason you can’t bite off your own fingers is because your brain limits your strength so you can’t hurt yourself.)
48	* VampireBitesSuck: The Girl's feeding is brutal, animalistic, and lethal.
49	* WouldHurtAChild: She doesn't kill the boy but she does threaten him and steal his skateboard so he'll be traumatized for life.
50	* WretchedHive: "Bad City" is an oil town with, seemingly, no police of any kind, rampant crime, and a ravine that is always full of freshly-dumped bodies.
51	* YoureNotMyFather: Arash finally loses patience with Hossein's drug addiction and self-pity and disowns him. [[spoiler:And ends up leaving town with the Girl, despite knowing that she killed him.]]

Context Film / AGirlWalksHomeAloneAtNight