Who would have thought that the director of Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz
would give us one of the most beautiful looking and enjoyable films of
2021, not me for starters, but that’s just what Edgar Wright’s Last Night
In Soho is. Every shot, with its sumptuous kaleidoscope of brash sixties
colours, a great mix of horror and nostalgia and a terrific soundtrack from
the period, Last Night In Soho is a film that demands to be seen in a
cinema.
The story sees sixties mad 19 year old Eloise (a terrific turn from New
Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie), “as in the song” we’re reminded by one
of the films characters, heading from her home in Cornwall to the bright
lights of London’s West End to take up a place at a fashion college in
Soho.
Heading off with her grandmothers (79 year old Rita Tushingham) words
ringing in her ears that “London can be a lot” it’s not long before she
finds that London can indeed be a lot as her first encounter with a sleazy
London cabbie has her jumping from the taxi and taking cover in a local
shop. Set up with a roommate (Synnove Karlsen) who could be straight out of
the cast of Mean Girls Eloise does a runner from the student flat ending up
in a bedsit run by an elderly single woman (82 year old Diana Rigg in her
last role).
On her first night in her new accommodation she dreams that she’s back in
the sixties, ending up in a nightclub where Cilla Black is singing. It’s in
this nightclub where she starts to take on the alter ego of an aspiring
singer called Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy).
Sandie’s star starts to rise, helped by a rogue called Jack (Matt Smith) so
does Eloise whose clothes designs inspired by her trip back to the sixties
start to get her noticed at the fashion college.
Unfortunately for Eloise the more she travels back to the sixties the
darker Sandie’s life becomes. And just as Sandie’s life becomes a nightmare
so does Eloise’s as she starts to have more and more horrific nightmares
leading her to believe that Sandie might have stayed in the very room
that’s she’s now staying in and that something sinister might have happened
to her.
With a wonderful cast, an eerie Terrence Stamp, 83, plays a pivotal role as
a sleazy old gentleman that hangs about the bar where Eloise works in the
evening, and a terrific storyline Last Night In Soho is highly recommended,
and coming from the man who brought us Hot Fuzz, who would have guessed
that.
