When Edgar Wright set out to follow Baby Drive – a 2017 film about cars and crime that turned out to be his biggest global hit to date – he settled on a completely different and darker tale, Last Night in Soho. … Known for the insane rampage of Sean from the Dead and Scott Pilgrim Against the World, Wright has suddenly turned into a dark and unnerving psychological horror thriller.
Combining the emotional tension of 1960s British dramas with the color-rich style of the Italian Giallos. (and the films that inspired them), Wright sought to capture something sinister lurking just beneath the central London neighborhoods where he lives and works.
“A lot of films from that period are about the dark side of Soho or show business,” Wright said of the sub-strain of 60s films that served as a major source of inspiration. “You still have to wonder where they come from, because many of the more sensational ones take this punitive approach to female characters. There are many films in which it seems that the genre is “A girl comes to London to succeed, and she is severely punished for her efforts.”
“And they are all written by men and directed by men. And it looks like the old guard are hitting the liberated generation, ”Wright said. “It was one of the many core ideas in which I thought, ‘This is an interesting genre.’ What if you made a film in which you changed it to a modern perspective through a double narrative about a modern girl who also comes to a big city? “
Wright and his Oscar-nominated co-creator Christy Wilson-Cairns (1917) wrote the story of contemporary fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), also named Ellie, when she leaves small town life for London. She soon finds herself enveloped in her nocturnal dream world, where she has strikingly real visions of a young woman named Sandy (Anya-Taylor Joy), who was an aspiring singer in the 1960s in the same neighborhoods where Eloise now lives.
Thomasin McKenzie (left) as Eloise and Anya Taylor-Joy as Sandy in Last Night in Soho by Edgar Wright.
(Focusing Features)
Initially fascinated by Sandy’s glamor and promises, Eloise soon witnesses Sandy’s exploitation when she is forced into prostitution on the pretext of continuing her career. Convinced that Sandy has been killed, Eloise becomes obsessed with uncovering a seemingly long-standing cold case these days.
“Making a film that slowly transitions from something so alluring and glamorous to something very dark and disturbing is completely deliberate,” Wright said in a recent interview a few days before the opening of the film.
Describing the film as a “dark valentine” for London and the Soho borough, Wright’s cast also includes iconic 60s British cinema actors Rita Tushingham, Terence Stamp and the late Diana Rigg in her most recent role.
Aside from the film’s darker tone, another notable difference between Last Night in Soho and Wright’s previous work is that the film is centered around two women rather than young men trying to band together. But, while Baby Drive in particular drew some criticism for its underdeveloped female characters, Wright says Last Night in Soho was not a deliberate reaction. According to him, this idea arose long before “Baby on a Drive”, and he was already eager to change something.
When Wright first met Wilson-Cairns, introduced by her 1917 co-creator Sam Mendes, at the members’ club in Soho, they were immediately linked by a shared story. The club was directly across the street from the apartment where Wilson-Cairns, who had moved to London from her native Glasgow, once lived, above one of the last remaining strip clubs in the area. Wright soon began telling her the story of Last Night in Soho and eventually asked her to collaborate.
Anya Taylor-Joy (left) and Thomasin Mackenzie in Last Night in Soho.
(Paris Taghizadeh / Focus Features)
Wilson-Cairns immediately notes that she was not there strictly to punch a feminine point of view in Wright’s world. “When I first heard this story, these two female characters were absolutely in her DNA. It was always a story of two women, ”she said. “I didn’t come just to be the writer in the room. I think that our shared life experience, the fact that we both loved Soho and lived in Soho and Soho, somehow imperceptible to both of us – it was more important than the fact that I was a woman, in fact.
“But at the same time, I also had to bring a lot of my life perspective into it. The idea of being in a taxi and creepy drivers who flirt with you, but not really with you, ”she added. “I’ve never had to insist on it, and I’ve never had to say, ‘Oh, I’m a woman, I understand that.’ He had such a keen understanding and desire to listen to all the women in his life so that he could then create something authentic. “
Some of the film’s key scenes take place in an intricate recreation of the Café de Paris, a famous London nightclub that opened in 1924 and only recently closed during the pandemic. Rigg, whose character currently exists in the film and has no scenes on that particular set, mentioned to Wright that she was in the real Café de Paris on her 18th birthday to see singer Shirley Bassey’s London debut. Wright then ushered her onto the soundstage to sort of retreat in time.
“She saw it and said, ‘Oh, this is amazing, it looks exactly the same, tell your production designer that he did such a great job,” Wright said. “And then there was something like a point, a point, a point … something else is coming. And I think that’s the key to the movie, ”she said. “I remember going down the stairs, and many men with watery eyes looked at me from head to toe and felt like a piece of meat.”
Anya Taylor-Joy and Matt Smith in Last Night in Soho by Edgar Wright.
(Paris Taghizadeh / Focus Features)
“This is literally what happens to Anya Taylor-Joy in her first scene,” added Wright. “And I should have thought that Diana even made the connection herself. The immediate reaction to this first conjured up a good memory, and immediately after that a darker one. I think that pretty much sums up the movie. “
While they did not draw on any specific story to create Sandy’s life among the seedy underworld of SoHo show business, Wright and Wilson-Cairns relied on a research dossier prepared by Lucy Purdy, who interviewed scores of people who lived through the era and knew the area well.
“Something that I consider to be truly a nightmare – and I believe there is an element in which I kind of sharply reproach myself – is the danger of excessive nostalgia for previous decades,” Wright said. “In a sense, the film is about romanticizing the past and why it’s … wrong. When people use the phrase “the good old days,” it means that there was a decade when everything was perfect and nothing was bad. And this, of course, is not true. Everything that is bad now is just as bad, if not worse. And it would be wrong to look around with pink glasses. “
“When I started researching, I found that many of the problems women faced back then – horrible sexism, you name it – were still in my life,” Wilson-Kearns said. “It was a very sobering experience to realize, ‘Oh, these problems were always the same problems.’ I think when you write a horror movie, you have to write about something that really scares you – and poisonous masculinity, violence against women and exploitation of women really scare me because this is such a part of our world. “
Thomasin McKenzie stars in Last Night in Soho.
(Paris Taghizadeh / Focus Features)
The film also tackles the issues of mental illness, sexual abuse, race and class in ways that are new to Wright. Ellie is described as possessing a “gift” that can be viewed as either a paranormal psychic force or a symptom of mental illness. In what Wright calls a “key scene,” Ellie ends up at the police station, trying to explain herself and everything she has seen and experienced. Completely fired by a male officer, she finds more sympathy from a female officer listening to a young woman who is clearly worried, frightened, and alone amid her new life in the city.
“You were on a journey with Eloise and saw everything she saw with the knowledge of what she had,” Wright said of the scene. “She can see things, but when she repeats it more formally, like in a police interrogation room, they obviously look at her like she’s crazy. My answer … I believe Elöise.
“Personally, I don’t think she is mentally ill. I truly believe that she has a gift, and Edgar and I know such people, ”said Wilson-Cairns. “She believes in what she knows and understands. And then this scene at the police station is obviously very important because we viewers know everything Ellie has seen, we have been with her every step of the way. We knew what she was trying to get across, and this male cop doesn’t want to listen. And I think, “Okay, yes, this is a genre film, but I think a lot of women were in these rooms and they weren’t listened to when they had very strong arguments.” So while what Ellie is trying to say is about murder in the past, I hope it resonates with people who would otherwise find themselves in those unfortunate situations. “
The film ends on an ambiguous note: the mystery of what happened to Sandy has been revealed, but new uncertainties about Eloise’s future emerge. And that’s exactly what Wright and Wilson-Cairns wanted.
“I think we always knew that the ending we were aiming for was not completely happy, like Disney’s, because it’s just not what’s happening in the world,” Wilson-Cairns said. “A sense of reality and a sense of honesty are very important in this film. Even though you spend a good deal of this in Ellie’s head and dreams, ultimately maintaining it allows you to then sink into those fantasies as a kind of free fall, and then you pull back that cable of reality. “
“I’d like people to chew on it,” Wright said. “I like movies that end with a question mark.”
