Ana Lily Amirpour on romance in the desert and the racial controversy over her new film, The Bad Batch
Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch, the follow-up to her acclaimed 2014 vampire love story A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is set in a world that feels like a Lana Del Rey song made flesh. In a dystopian version of the Texas desert, one-armed, one-legged gunslinger Arlen (model Suki Waterhouse) tries to find a home for herself on the edge of civilization. Arlen’s world is full of broken TVs, giant boomboxes, AK-47s, booty shorts, crinkled July Fourth decorations, ceaseless ecstasy-fueled raves, and Statue of Liberty Halloween costumes — all the detritus of Americana. Also, there are cannibals.
Arlen is alone in this hellscape, and the film moves slowly, taking almost all of its narrative intrigue from the audience’s struggle to…