Hard to put a finger on what makes Edgar Wright’s latest movie, Last Night in Soho, so deeply affecting. Is it the fascination with Anya Taylor-Joy’s indelible performance? So good at grabbing the eye in The Queen’s Gambit, Taylor-Joy is mainly a phantom in this coming-of-age horror movie set in a sinister London in the ‘60’s when everyone was swinging until they were not. Called Sandie, she haunts Eloise’s fantasies of a time gone by, when her mother came to the big city from the countryside to some tragic end. At the beginning, Wright lures you in: you think Eloise (the lovely Thomasin McKenzie) is a stand-in for Audrey Hepburn, twirling about in a frilly frock, mirrors galore in her bedroom, focused on fashion. Ingenue comes to London to learn her craft and is instead caught up in the horrors of exploitative men—such as Matt Smith, sporting a devilish seductiveness in a James Dean hair swoosh-- who steal their dreams.
A gut punch, in other words, to girls of a time when such exploration was possible, lacking guidance. Eloise has a loving grandma (nice to see
Rita Tushingham again) and an odd landlady (
Diana Rigg in a final performance). The older generation of women were certainly not equipped to navigate their own freedoms, let alone their daughters’. Sandie, not being the only ghost in Eloise’s psyche, causes some temporary collapse—blood, fire, cinematic equivalents of horrific visions-- and a chorus of “mean girls” adds to Eloise’s nightmares as does
Terrence Stamp as a sinister eminence grise. Yes, this metaphoric encapsulation hides some jarring truth, and I still can’t get it out of my head.
Comments