How ‘Soho’ director challenges the past
‘Dark valentine’ to London subverts the good old days.
When filmmaker Edgar Wright set out to follow “Baby Driver” — the cars-and-crime themed 2017 movie that proved to be his biggest worldwide hit to date by a wide margin — he landed on a decidedly different and darker tale in “Last Night in Soho.” Known for the madcap exuberance of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” Wright has taken an unexpected turn into a moody and unnerving psychological horror thriller.
Blending the emotional intensity of 1960s British dramas with the color-saturated style of Italian giallos (and the films that inspired them), Wright aimed to capture something sinister lurking just underneath the central London neighborhoods where he lives and works.
“A lot of films of that period are about the darker side of Soho or of show business,” said Wright of the sub-strain of ’60s films that served as a core inspiration. “You still have to question where they’re coming from, because there’s a lot of them which are more the sensationalistic ones that take this kind of punitive approach to the female characters. There’s a lot of movies where it seem that the genre is ‘Girl comes to London to make it big and is roundly punished for her efforts.’
“And they’re all written by men and directed by men. And it seems like the old guard slapping down the liberated generation,” Wright said. “That was one of the many kernels of the idea that I thought, ‘This is an interesting genre.’ And what if you did a movie where you kind of subverted it to a modern perspective through a twin narrative of a contemporary girl coming to the big city too?”
Wright and his Oscar nominated co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns (”1917’) crafted the story of contemporary fashion student Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), who also goes by Ellie, as she leaves behind small town life for London. Lost and lonely, she soon finds herself wrapped up in the nighttime world of her dreams, where she has startlingly 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.
Initially captivated by Sandy’s glamour and promise, Eloise soon witnesses Sandy’s exploitation as she’s forced into prostitution under the guise of furthering her career. Convinced that Sandy was murdered, Eloise becomes obsessed with solving the seeming decades-old cold case in the present day.
“The construction of the movie where it’s a slow burn from something so alluring and glamorous to something very dark and disturbing is absolutely intentional,” said Wright during a recent interview days before the movie’s opening.
Describing the movie as a “dark valentine” to London and the Soho neighborhood, Wright’s cast also includes emblematic actors of ’60s British cinema — Rita Tushingham, Terence Stamp and the late Diana Rigg in her final role.
Aside from the film’s darker tone, another notable difference in comparing “Last Night in Soho” to Wright’s previous work is that the film centers around two women instead of young men trying to get their act together. But, while “Baby Driver” in particular drew some criticism for having underdeveloped female characters, Wright says “Last Night in Soho” was not a purposeful response. The idea, he says, came up long before “Baby Driver.”
When Wright first met Wilson-Cairns, introduced by her “1917’ collaborator Sam Mendes, at a members club in Soho, they immediately bonded over their shared histories. The club was right across the street from an apartment where Wilson-Cairns, who moved to London from her native Glasgow, had once lived above one of the last remaining strip clubs in the area. Wright soon began telling her the genesis of “Last Night in Soho” and eventually asked her to collaborate as well.
Wilson-Cairns is quick to point out she was not there strictly to punch up the female viewpoint in Wright’s world. “The very first time I heard the story, those two female characters were absolutely in the DNA of it. It was always a story about two women,” she said. “I didn’t come in to just be the female writer in the room. I think our shared life experience, the fact that we both loved Soho and lived in Soho and Soho had kind of creeped under the skin of both of us — that was more important than that fact that I was a woman, really.
“But at same time, I got to bring a lot of my life perspective to it as well. The idea of being in taxi cabs and creepy drivers flirting with you, but not quite flirting with you ...” she added. “I never had to push that, and I never had to say, ‘Oh, I’m a woman, I understand this.’”
Some of the movie’s key scenes happen in an exacting recreation of the Cafe de Paris, a famed London nightclub that opened in 1924 and only recently closed during the pandemic. Rigg, whose character exists in the film’s present day and has no scenes on that particular set, had mentioned to Wright that she was at the actual Cafe de Paris for her 18th birthday to see the London debut of singer Shirley Bassey. Wright then escorted her onto the soundstage, to in a sense step back in time.
“She saw it and she said, ‘Oh, this is amazing, it looks just like it, do tell your production designer he did such a great job,’” Wright said. “And then there was this like dot, dot, dot ... there’s something else coming. And I think it’s very key to the movie, she said, ‘I remember walking down the stairs and lots of rheumy-eyed men looking at me up and down and feeling like a piece of meat.’
“That’s literally what happens to Anya Taylor-Joy in her first scene,” added Wright.The film also touches on issues of mental illness, sexual violence, race and class in ways that are new for Wright. Ellie is described as having “a gift” that could be seen as either a paranormal psychic power — or a sign of mental illness. In what Wright calls a “key scene,” Ellie ends up in a police station trying to explain herself and all she has seen and experienced. Dismissed entirely by a male officer, she finds more sympathy from a female officer listening to a young woman who is obviously troubled, scared and lonely amidst her new life in the city.
“You’ve been on the journey with Eloise and seen everything that she’s seen with the knowledge that she has,” said Wright of the scene.