A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

 Prompt: "We read people by their clothing, but in cinema all may not be as it seems"

I feel like this phrase doesn't apply to this film at all. In "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night " every character seems to be wearing a costume that tells us exactly who they are, the archetype they represent and also hints at what they are about to do.

The male protagonist is dressed in a James Dean get-up for most of the film, signaling how he is someone who ended up on the wrong style of the tracks and outside of the law, but underneath it all he is a romantic. 

The exception to his costume is when he dresses as a vampire in the party scene and even still this directly tells the audience how dynamics are about to change. How the real vampire in the of the movie is about to submit to him and become vulnerable. 

This female protagonist who is the "real" vampire in the film wears a chador which looks like a vampire's cape. The way she wears it shows up her stripy, modern clothes underneath. This is read as a direct metaphor for how her character is going against a patriarchal society that would see women more as victims rather than aggressors.  

Her eyeliner also gets darker when her fangs become visible.

Small details in the clothing in this film seem to constantly be referring to what is happening or is about to happen. For example when the vampire and and the drug dealer are together they both have white stripes on their clothes while he's racking up white lines on the table. 

 

The dealer also has a cat pendant on after threatening the life of the house-cat in the film and we see that he has "SEX" tattooed on his throat just before he gets a blowjob. 

It's things like these that I noticed in the films that made it difficult for me to find any instance where clothing or the appearance of a character has the power to deceive the audience.