Last Night in Soho
Edgar Wright is such a fun director to root for because of his infectious love and ethusiasm for cinema. Similar to someone like Quentin Tarantino, his style is pastiched, but lovinginly pays tribute to the films he loves in spades within his own body of work while still being fresh and exciting. I love to compare Baby Driver as Edgar Wright's version of Walter Hill's The Driver but set to one of the best soundtracks ever. With Last Night in Soho, Wright crafts a love letter to Dario Argento’s Suspiria, but set against the backdrop of fashionable Soho London (both the present day and the 60s).
Everything on screen, from Anya-Taylor Joy, Matt Smith and Thomasin McKenzie being absolutely electricfying, the technical merits of costume and production design, and a soundtrack that still proves Wright knows how to pick the best needledrops, are all the aesthics elements we've come to expect from him. That being said, Wright and co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns feel creatively empty regarding any depth or emotional catharsis for McKenzie's Eloise (or any character for that matter, save for Anya-Taylor Joy's Sandy). It’s almost the same flaws that Baby Driver has, which is a shame, because there is a lot that works for this film, it just feels like most of the characters are flat and unmemorable, leaving the audience distracted by the sheer eye-candy like bombardment of the technical elements I mentioned above. It’s all presentation without flavour.
A lot of sexual politics involved and Eloise's overt fetishization of 60's culture is a great subtext for those who blindly worship elements of popular culture, be it film or fashion, without critically understanding the underlying darkness or power structures behind it, and it's a great way to read the film. However, I can't say Soho is a step in the Wright direction for Edgar, though his filmography as a director has no duds in my eyes. After the screening, one of the critics I talked to said this felt like an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and that analogy couldn't be more accurate.
P.S. Give Mark Rowland an Oscar already!
3/5
