Last Night In Soho (15.)
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham and Diana Rigg. 116 mins.
Queueing up obscenely early on a Saturday morning in a backstreet snaking back from Leicester Square among the vomit, poo, broken bottles and overall stench of the previous night was the perfect preparation for Edgar Wright's nostalgic anti-nostalgic, affection-filled hate mail to the glamorous heart of London. This time-travelling psychological thriller contrasts Soho's sixties squalor with the present day, suggesting sleaze is embedded in the area's soul, from the sex trade to the £7 pint.
Ellie (McKenzie from JoJo Rabbit) is an innocent fashion student from the country who, phased by the big city and bitchy fellow students, ends up renting a room in Goodge Street from Diana Rigg. There she takes on the dreams of the people that slept there before, travelling back to the mid-sixties and becoming Sandy (Taylor-Joy) an ambitious young singer who will find herself exploited and led astray by manager Jack (Smith.)
When Wright gets to enthuse over his favourite movies he generally mentions a few Giallos, violent Italian horrors from the seventies/ eighties and here he gets to play being Dario Argento. But this is a frightfully British Giallo, half period piece, rather mild and not scary. There's an inhibiting niceness to it. Giallos were horribly sleazy and exploitative, but this is trying to make a statement against that sort of thing.
There are a lot of things to enjoy. The sixties sequences are beautifully executed and there are some top performances. Diana Rigg's final screen performance is a gem. (Wright wrote a really moving piece for the Guardian remembering her.) There are some neat twists and great music. Perhaps its boldest move is to reclaim Cilla Black as a singer, before becoming R. Sylla.
On the down side, I don't think the film ever really convinces us that the time-travelling connection between Ellie and Sandy is anything more than a contrivance and a lot of the supporting characters are thinly drawn. Even Sandy and Jack aren't given much depth, yet they still dominate the film. Sixties glamour, however tawdry the reality, will always outshine drab present day. Taylor-Joy is so confident, so assure and so full of life it should make the fact that even she couldn't triumph over the sex industry that bit more powerful. The film though never quite forces that home, can't move past the allure of her opening scenes.
Directed by Edgar Wright.
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Michael Ajao, Terence Stamp, Rita Tushingham and Diana Rigg. 116 mins.
Queueing up obscenely early on a Saturday morning in a backstreet snaking back from Leicester Square among the vomit, poo, broken bottles and overall stench of the previous night was the perfect preparation for Edgar Wright's nostalgic anti-nostalgic, affection-filled hate mail to the glamorous heart of London. This time-travelling psychological thriller contrasts Soho's sixties squalor with the present day, suggesting sleaze is embedded in the area's soul, from the sex trade to the £7 pint.
Ellie (McKenzie from JoJo Rabbit) is an innocent fashion student from the country who, phased by the big city and bitchy fellow students, ends up renting a room in Goodge Street from Diana Rigg. There she takes on the dreams of the people that slept there before, travelling back to the mid-sixties and becoming Sandy (Taylor-Joy) an ambitious young singer who will find herself exploited and led astray by manager Jack (Smith.)
When Wright gets to enthuse over his favourite movies he generally mentions a few Giallos, violent Italian horrors from the seventies/ eighties and here he gets to play being Dario Argento. But this is a frightfully British Giallo, half period piece, rather mild and not scary. There's an inhibiting niceness to it. Giallos were horribly sleazy and exploitative, but this is trying to make a statement against that sort of thing.
There are a lot of things to enjoy. The sixties sequences are beautifully executed and there are some top performances. Diana Rigg's final screen performance is a gem. (Wright wrote a really moving piece for the Guardian remembering her.) There are some neat twists and great music. Perhaps its boldest move is to reclaim Cilla Black as a singer, before becoming R. Sylla.
On the down side, I don't think the film ever really convinces us that the time-travelling connection between Ellie and Sandy is anything more than a contrivance and a lot of the supporting characters are thinly drawn. Even Sandy and Jack aren't given much depth, yet they still dominate the film. Sixties glamour, however tawdry the reality, will always outshine drab present day. Taylor-Joy is so confident, so assure and so full of life it should make the fact that even she couldn't triumph over the sex industry that bit more powerful. The film though never quite forces that home, can't move past the allure of her opening scenes.
