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With ‘Twilight’ in the rear-view mirror, movie vampires are going goth. After Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’, along comes this pulse-quickening debut by Ana Lily Amirpour. She’s an LA-based director who infuses her night-time tale with elements of David Lynch, spaghetti westerns and gender politics.
The movie takes place in a kind of alternative Tehran, here called Bad City and peopled with weirdos. Mainly, we follow the old-fashioned attraction between Arash (Arash Marandi), a hipster dealing with his dad’s debts, and the dark-lipped unnamed woman of the title (Sheila Vand), who’s lonely enough to keep her toothy instincts in check. The plot’s tired blood is warmed up considerably by style; all in all, this is an intoxicating blend of eerie horror and ’80s pop, made by an filmmaker to keep an eye on.