Last Night in Soho (2021)

I will concede at the beginning that I may not be the most objective reporter when it comes to an Edgar Wright film. I am a fangirl, but I am also a fan of other filmmakers, and I don’t think that prevents me from seeing straight when it comes to evaluating a film made by someone I admire. What it does, I suppose, is make me the most open that I can possibly be to receive what the filmmakers want to give me. So when something works, it REALLY works, but when something doesn’t, I’m not predisposed to ignore it or pretend it does. I also saw this film at a surprise screening at Fantastic Fest, the first screening ever in the United States, with Wright in attendance. So I won’t deny that the excitement of that experience might have heightened my appreciation for it.

I say all this up front because reviews of this movie have been wildly mixed. People either really love it or really hate it (the critic on rogerebert.com gave it one and a half stars, which seems brutally unfair for any film as technically accomplished as even this movie’s harshest critics can surely admit that it is). I actually really love when a movie is polarizing -- like another movie I adored this year, Leos Carax’s ANNETTE -- because at the very least I can be confident that it will be interesting.

So my verdict, the short version: I loved it, utterly. I have nitpicks but they don’t detract from my overall response to it. It is definitely one of my favorite films of the year, if not my favorite outright. It is beautiful, hypnotic, terrifying and (though I may get some blowback on this) feminist. Yes, feminist. I described it to friends on social media as “A Lot, in the way all of [Wright’s] movies are A Lot. But this one may be the most A Lot of all his films so far.” That’s not a criticism, by the way. Like all of his previous work, there’s just “a lot” of information coming at your eyeholes and earholes and it’s impossible to catch it all in one viewing. But this is actually a pretty big departure for Wright, in several ways, which I’ll get to in a bit more detail below.

So now for the longer version... 

[Note: What follows is more detailed than the film’s marketing is giving you, but I’m avoiding anything from, say, the last half of the movie, not only because I and my fellow audience members promised Wright to do so, but also because spoiling stuff is just a dick move, especially with a movie like this. It may still, however, be more than you want to know going in. So proceed with caution.]

If you associate Edgar Wright with movies about lovable schlubs or awkward twenty-something guys who learn life lessons (or don’t), this movie is about the wildest swing he could have made. Which would be a good thing even if the movie was a failure (and it certainly isn’t). He has been accused in the past of having female characters who are “sexy lamps” (meaning a female character can easily be replaced with a sexy lamp without it making a difference to the scene/story). I disagree (I will cut a bitch for BABY DRIVER’s Debra) but I still found it refreshing to see him center a story on two (arguably three) awesome women.

First and foremost among these women is our hero Eloise (“Ellie”) Turner, played by Thomasin McKenzie. If you don’t know Ms. McKenzie, seek out Debra Granik’s LEAVE NO TRACE immediately (she is also in JO-JO RABBIT and this summer’s OLD). Ellie moves to London from a small town in Cornwall to go to a fashion academy and very soon tires of the company of her dormmates. She rents an upper-floor bedsit in Soho and gets a job at a local pub to help with her expenses. We’ve been told Ellie has a special gift, a kind of “sight,” but we don’t really know what that means until Ellie’s first night in her room in Soho, when somehow she is able to travel back in time to the 1960s -- an era of London’s history that has always held fascination for her. She follows a young woman named Sandy, who is beautiful and stylish and wants to be a singer like Cilla Black. Ellie has this experience night after night, watching as Sandy navigates the seedy world of London after dark -- sometimes Ellie *is* Sandy, sometimes she is simply watching. It is unclear how the rules of these experiences work, or if there even are any, which should be our first clue that what Ellie sees might not be the full truth.

Sandy is actually named Alexandra and is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who most people at this point know from THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT but who horror fans will have known since her breakout role in THE WITCH (2015), her first film role. Sandy lives/lived in the room that is now Ellie’s and is determined to be a singer, confident that she can become one without having to jump through the normal hoops. She meets a man named Jack (DOCTOR WHO’s Matt Smith), who she is told “manages all the girls” and who promises to make her a star. She gets an audition and lands a job as a backup singer/dancer for a … what shall I call it? … let’s just say not the kind of show she dreamed about doing. And things go from bad to worse for her, as Jack coerces her into, errr, entertaining wealthy admirers, which he has apparently done to several of his “girls.” Ellie desperately wants to help her, but again it is unclear how things work in these visions of hers and how much impact she can actually have, particularly as she is seeing things that have long ago happened. I should say here that if you are someone who gets really into rules and logic and how things -- even nonsensical things -- work, you may not enjoy this movie. You’re going to have to let some stuff go to get fully immersed in it. I think it’s worth it. In the words of Elder McKinley in THE BOOK OF MORMON (musical), “turn it off.”

[Side note: I look forward to seeing essays looking at this movie through an LGBTQIA+ lens. There is a definite homoerotic undertone (which I suspect many would call overtone) to Ellie’s attachment to Sandy, though many straight viewers would probably see it more as a “Kinsey One” romantic rather than sexual attraction. The latter is how I see it myself, but I’d be interested to see a queer examination of it.]

And then there’s the late Dame Diana Rigg in her final film role, playing Ellie’s landlady Ms. Collins. Rigg is probably best known to modern audiences as Olenna Tyrell from GAME OF THRONES, but she had an enormous career on stage and screen, dating back to the late 1950s. She was Emma Peel in THE AVENGERS (no relation to Marvel), she played Madea on stage numerous times in London and on Broadway, and she played Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, the wife of James Bond, in ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE (low-key maybe the best Bond movie and definitely the best “Bond girl”). Ms. Collins is a tough old broad who has seen it all throughout the decades. Her response to a worried Ellie asking about a girl who used to live in her room is so hilariously blase I fell in love with her instantly. She’s owned the building for a long time and she won’t sell it, even though the property value has skyrocketed over the years. She demands a lot of upfront money and has some strict rules, but Ellie thinks it's a good trade-off.

Also of note in the cast are Rita Tushingham (of THE KNACK … AND HOW TO GET IT and DOCTOR ZHIVAGO) as Ellie’s grandmother Peggy, and Terence Stamp (of SUPERMAN II, THE LIMEY and THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT), who plays a mysterious man who frequents the pub where Ellie works. Oh, and for Harry Potter film fans, James and Oliver Phelps (Fred and George Weasley) appear briefly, as mirror images of the same person (they’re seen in the trailer -- Oliver removes Ellie’s jacket, James removes Sandy’s coat).

Ellie is not very successful at making friends at the academy, and her increasing desire to escape her real life and live in another world and another time felt incredibly relatable to me (there’s a scene where she turns down a possible date, saying he has “plans,” and I felt attacked and seen all at once). She does eventually make a friend (and potentially more than a friend) in a classmate named John (played by Michael Ajao -- Mayhem from ATTACK THE BLOCK, all grown-up and love interest-y), who is one of the only men in the film that isn’t trash (I guess the guy who works at the pub is also probably okay). This aspect of the film reminded me a bit of PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, a movie seemingly everyone loved but I could not stand, where Bo Burnham is the only “good one” (until he’s not). I liked this significantly more because there are layers to the awfulness (as there are in real life, naturally) and just because you don’t descend to the level of Actual Would-Be Rapist doesn’t mean you’re not still a creep and terrible and someone women want to avoid.

Over the course of the movie, Ellie’s visions get more intense and horrifying and even start to affect her while she’s awake and not in her room. The men who leer at Sandy (and eventually more than leer) start to appear to Ellie as vague, lurking boogeymen with indistinct, blurry faces. (Earlier on the day I saw this, I saw a short film called UNCLE, in which figures similar to this were used as a metaphor for the trauma of sexual assault.) An on-the-nose metaphor, perhaps, but an effective one. At least for some. I read one critic who dismissed these creatures as unscary, and I thought Congratulations. Enjoy not being a woman, where every man you bump into you have to wonder if this is the one that’s going to grope or rape or kill you.

I said above that this movie is feminist and I do feel that it is. Part of the credit for that must go to Wright’s co-writer, Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who was Oscar-nominated for co-writing 1917 with Sam Mendes a couple of years ago. Wilson-Cairns, obviously, has a perspective that Wright does not, and I have to imagine that some of those creepy lines thrown at Ellie (and Sandy) are things that have been said to her herself. There’s probably at least one creepy thing said or done to the women in this movie that every woman can relate to specifically. (Mine was the over-friendly cab driver.) And there’s a thread of “ladies helping ladies” (or at least trying to), which is always a favorite theme of mine.

Wright has mentioned that, in response to criticism that most of his films don’t pass the Bechdel test (Google it) -- SCOTT PILGRIM barely does -- he was determined to have this film pass in the opening moments, and sure enough it does: 1) two women, 2) both with actual names (Peggy and Ellie), 3) talk to each other 4) about something other than a man (Ellie getting accepted into fashion design school). It may seem flip and superficial to check this off like it’s on some grocery list, but I kind of love that checking it off was a priority because it presumably helped shape all the decisions that came after it.

There are tons of influences feeding this movie, so many that I couldn’t possibly list them all. But here are a few off the top of my head. Wright originally said this movie was inspired by both REPULSION (1965) and DON’T LOOK NOW (1973). REPULSION’s creepy and insistent men and its surreal visuals are obvious things it has in common with LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, as is DON’T LOOK NOW’s main character trying to resolve a tragedy that happened in the past (as well as a character with psychic abilities). I also see a lot of Bava and Argento in the visuals (everyone will compare this to Argento’s SUSPIRIA, and yes, there’s a lot of intense color in this movie, but there are so many other movies that it resembles visually, and most of what Argento knows about the use of color he learned from Bava anyway). I see a little NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (Ellie’s hickie reminded me of Nancy burning herself in her dream and having a burn mark on her arm when she wakes up, and there’s a lot of ambiguity about when she’s awake and when she’s in one of her visions); PIECES (can’t get too specific, but it has nothing to do with a kung fu professor); and Bava’s THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (Ellie reminds me so much of Nora) and BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (the raincoat is an obvious reference, but the whole film would make a great double feature with this movie). And there are surely many others that I’m just not thinking of right now.

But unlike several of Wright’s other films, these aren’t winks and nods. There’s no “We’re coming to get you, Barbara” like SHAUN OF THE DEAD’s direct reference to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or a cleverly designed title card to make BABY DRIVER remind you of TAXI DRIVER. Nothing that loud (though there’s nothing at all wrong with loud when it fits the movie’s tone, which both of those examples do). I won’t call LAST NIGHT IN SOHO’s Easter eggs subtle, but they play less as references and more as part of the general flavor. Also missing (maybe just toned down, but I didn’t notice them at all) are his most obvious and characteristic visual gags, like the quick zooms and rapid montages. Most of the movie is played fairly straight, though Wright’s humor and personality can’t help coming through (the first couple minutes of the film are an utter delight and reminded me of the opening credits of ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, of all things; the whole scene is just so goofy and joyful that it makes me smile to think of him directing it).

If you love the tunes in Wright’s movies, there is SO MUCH MUSIC in this one (one critic said Wright had finally overdone the needle drops -- I’m not sure I agree, but there are a BUNCH). It contributes greatly to the full immersion into the world, especially the 1960s scenes. This would also make a great companion piece to ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, another 1960s nostalgia trip. There’s not really one big iconic musical moment a la “Don’t Stop Me Now” from SHAUN, though. The closest is Anya Taylor-Joy’s eerie a capella rendition of “Downtown” (heard in the movie’s first trailer).

The visuals are stunning and probably beyond my limited cinematic understanding to fully examine them. All of Wright’s movies have incredible style, but this just feels like it’s on another level. The cinematography is stunning (from frequent Chan-wook Park collaborator Chung-hoon Chung) and most of the visual tricks you see are done in-camera (like the moment in the gif above). There's an amazing contrast between the exciting and bustling Soho you see in the daytime and the seedy and intimidating one you see after dark, both in the 1960s and present day. 

I did have a couple of nitpicks, but they’re both more spoilery than I’m comfortable getting into. I know it seems like I’ve given an awful lot away already, but I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’m dying to talk about the second half of this movie, partly because that’s where a lot of detractors claim the movie falls apart and I just … don’t agree? Like, I’m starting to think “falls apart” actually means “went in a direction I wasn’t expecting / didn’t approve of.” Because the climax of the movie totally works for me and rocked my face off. Yes, it's wild -- that's why it's awesome! Okay, the very end is a bit cheese, but it’s needed cheese. And it contains one of my favorite moments in the movie … WHICH I CAN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT BECAUSE IT GIVES TOO MUCH AWAY, GRRRRRR. Get here, October 29! 

I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Go see it if you can when it’s out. It will only be in theaters initially, but it’s a great one to go out and see when the nights start getting longer and chillier.