Edgar Wright combines his chaotic-people motifs with Sparks-Brothers-like musical force to give us an intoxicating time travel back to '60's Soho and two dynamic heroines.
Last Night in Soho
“This is London. Someone has died in every room in every building and on every street corner in the city.” Ms Collins (Diana Rigg)
In Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, young Ellie (Thomasin McKenzie) moves to London from the burbs to study fashion design and die a little in order to live. It happens to the best of us as we come of age, especially when our caldron is the greatest town on earth (at least for me).
Ellie is a young greenhorn fashion-designer wannabe who moves to study in London and boards at Ms. Collins’ rooms in Soho, whose greatness expired after the great ‘60’s. Yet somehow, and chalk this up to the magical imagination of writer/director Wright, she is regularly transported, Twilight -Zone style, from this room to the actual 60’s Soho and the company of wannabe singer, soulmate, mirror image Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy). Their passionate ambitions are about to meet soul-searing reality in the form of men who want not just them but the power they can wield over them.
This Soho makes Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris a veritable picnic by comparison with a grizzled, white-haired old drinker (60’s icon Terence Stamp), who contains much to be learned about the town’s bloody business and life itself.
Soho comes alive with Steven Price’s score and the on-point 60’s soundtrack including Petula Clark’s iconic Downtown. Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s vintage costumes make you want to get a plane tic right now to buy anything on Oxford Street.
Behind this breathless reproduction lies the visual delight of Cuung-hoon Chung’s cinematography. It all immersed me in my memory of that little Soho restaurant that made only garlic products such as their exotic martinis or when I languished in the Square looking up at Paul McCartney’s offices displaying on the wall his gold records.
Despite the prostitution that Wright weaves as a reality check, his Soho is alive with charm and temptation. Yet, it is the Last Night in Soho not just for our maturing heroines but for us lost in nostalgia.
With a final act to rival Stephen King’s Carrie, the issue of female empowerment is fired up, so to speak, and the lesson leads to an appreciation of home now for love and safety. It’s dangerous out there now and then. In theaters.
Last Night in Soho
Director: Edgar Wright (Baby Driver, Shaun of the Dead, The Sparks Brothers)
Screenplay: Wright, Kristy Wilson-Cairns (1917)
Cast: Thomasin McKenzie (Old), Anya Taylor-Joy (Queen’s Gambit)
Run Time: 1h 56m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
