Spending a 'Last Night in Soho'
Edgar Wright switches styles for this stylish thriller.
It’s safe to say I’m going to show up for whatever Edgar Wright does. One of the greatest moviegoing surprises of my life was when I took a chance on an opening night showing of Shaun of the Dead. I immediately fell in love with the mix of spoof and horror and Wright’s directorial command. He’s one of the few directors around who still cares about visual humor, and his scripts are airtight. As a huge buddy cop fan, I think Hot Fuzz might be Wright’s masterpiece, although I love every film in his Cornetto trilogy, had a lot of fun with Baby Driver, and still marvel at how Scott Pilgrim vs. The World managed to be simultaneously the best comic book movie and the best videogame movie.
Wright goes in a new direction with Last Night in Soho, his love letter to British thrillers and the giallo movies of the 1960s. It’s both his first non-comedy and his first film to feature a female lead. Thomasin McKenzie stars as Eloise, a country girl who comes to London to study fashion design. Obsessed with the city’s “Swinging Sixties” culture and feeling like a bad fit with her classmates, Eloise rents a room of her own from atop a rundown French café. When she goes to sleep, she’s suddenly swept back in time, connected to a glamorous aspiring singer named Sandy (Anya Taylor-Joy). But while she initially enjoys the peek back, Eloise quickly learns that the past hides dark secrets and that Sandy’s journey may have come to a macabre end.
While Wright puts the humor on hold, his energy and command of style are stronger than ever. The film opens with an energetic dance sequence that captures Eloise’s love of nostalgia and her young enthusiasm. Wright has always been skilled with needle drops (see the entirety of Baby Driver), and he unleashes an arsenal of 60s pop classics to set the tone. During Eloise’s first dream sequence, Wright stages a dizzying sequence using in-camera techniques to swap McKenzie and Taylor-Joy into a dance with a mysterious man (Matt Smith); knowing this was largely done in camera only makes it that much more of a triumph. And when the scares come, Wright rustles up visions of gray, faceless men and puts the energy shown in Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End to great use.
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Wright’s visual prowess has always been a crucial part of his storytelling ability, and he uses it to efficiently build his world and set his stage for Last Night in Soho. Without bogging the film down in exposition, Wright clues us in to Eloise’s supernatural sensitivities and creates a London that is at once modern but hiding its own ghosts. Krysty Wilson-Cairns’ screenplay, working off a story by Wright, layers in suggestions about London’s old self existing under its contemporary guise, and Wright repeatedly shows buildings that once housed vibrant nightclubs and cafes now standing silent, home to knock-off department stories and cheap bistros, their architecture the only hint of their former splendor.
The film is a clever and potent examination of the dangers of nostalgia. It’s not the first time Wright’s dealt with the subject; The World’s End was the story of a man clinging to his past to excuse his current demons. Last Night in Soho takes a different approach; Eloise is nostalgic for a time before her own. She’s obsessed with the fashions, music and movies of 1960s London. But Wright suggests nostalgia can be unhealthy, even deadly, if we ignore its darker sides. The London Eloise fell in love with is darker than she knows, and the culture she loves was built on exploitation, abuse and heartbreak. As Eloise delves deeper, she is faced with the choice of whether to escape it or reckon with it, even if it costs her sanity.
McKenzie is quickly becoming an actor who immediately piques my interest. She’s able to simultaneously convey innocence and an old soul, and it’s served her well in JoJo Rabbit and this summer’s Old. Eloise is a country girl not aware of the complexities of modern city life; her peers describe her as having a “born-again Christian vibe.” And while McKenzie captures that innocence, she doesn’t wallow in naivete. Eloise quickly becomes enamored with the chance to eavesdrop on a culture she’s only heard about from family, but that infatuation quickly turns to obsession. McKenzie navigates the role with deft and nuance; it’s one of my favorite performances of the year.
Taylor-Joy can convey glamour and sorrow well, and she’s asked to do both, along with an unsettling, ethereal presence. As Sandy endures a life that becomes darker and harder than she anticipated, Taylor-Joy runs the gamut of emotions, from elation to resignation to emotional deadness, and she’s fantastic. Smith and Terrence Stamp are equally charming and terrifying in different measures as men encountered at different times on Eloise and Sandy’s journeys. The quartet at the center of this is so strong that it excuses some of the underwritten roles surrounding it, although Diana Rigg has the opportunity to brighten a minor role in her final performance (the film is dedicated to her).
For about 100 minutes, Last Night in Soho is a stylish and energetic thriller, peppered with scares and a few bloody flourishes. It also has some interesting things to say about our relationship to culture, nostalgia, and our responsibility to past sins. That’s why it’s so jarring when the film takes a turn in its final 20 minutes that muddies these themes. It’s matched by a climax that teeters on the edge of camp after such a composed and focused hour. Wright doesn’t totally lose control; he manages to wring some poignancy and emotion out of its final shots, but you can feel him straining to keep it on the tracks. I understand he’s playing with the narrative twists and turns, as well as the dreamlike feel of the giallo subgenre, but he just can’t seem to bring the film in for a landing.
As such, I’m sure that if I were to list my favorite Wright movies, Last Night in Soho would be near the bottom (I have not seen The Sparks Brothers documentary, but it was recently added to Netflix and is in my queue). But even that’s misleading; Wright continues to be one of the most visually inventive directors around and I think he has yet to make a bad film. If this is my least-favorite film of his, it’s still better than the vast majority of anything else out there, and I still recommend it.
I also talked about Last Night in Soho with fellow critic Kevin McLenithan on Christ and Pop Culture’s “Seeing and Believing” podcast. Give it a listen!