Last Night in Soho

I’m going to start with a criticism that won’t matter to anyone who isn’t British, but if Eloise (Ellie) grew up anywhere near Redruth, or Jocasta near Manchester, then I’m a virgin fresher. (Wikipedia tells me they’re from New Zealand and Glasgow respectively and clearly they need to do more accent work. Although there’s one scene where I almost fell out of my chair because, having just given up on it, Ellie suddenly sounded at least authentically West Country, if not Cornish.) Having bitched about that, I don’t know if the girl playing Cilla Black was lip-syncing or singing live, but she looked and sounded good. Equally, I don’t remember Jack's (Matt Smith) accent slipping. Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy) doesn’t say where she’s from, and to me her accent reads like faux-cockney on top of something (I can’t quite place what), but that’s not unreasonable for the time and someone trying to fit in, in London, sound cool, and while her accent meanders a little but stays in that territory which, again, seems fair for someone trying to blend in with a new accent. I’m not doing it deliberately, but since moving up here, my accent is gradually acquiring more and more bits of Geordie, but it’s not even and consistent.

This was Diane Rigg's last film, and while I like Thomazin Mackenzie (Ellie) well enough (it took me a while to place her, she’s the girl in JoJo Rabbit) it does feel a bit unfair putting those two in the same scene so often when they’re at opposite ends of their career like this.

The central premise was established in the trailer, so it’s not really a spoiler. Ellie is some kind of psychic and sees things in mirrors and her dreams. The trailer lets us see her swap places with Sandie, in Soho in the 60’s. In the film there’s a bit more to it, to help establish the visual language and the story element of it. That carries on beautifully through the film, as she starts dreaming about Sandy and her life.

The film has what is, for me, an unnecessary sort of second intro, when Ellie reaches London. She goes into halls (common but not required apparently - it was automatic for me, but that was 40 years and not in London) and actually goes to a real halls for UAL. But then she has a terrible roommate (Jocasta) who essentially forces her to move out into a bedsit. (This moves the story along because she’s suddenly seeing Sandie in her dreams and mirrors.) But this is a British university. We don’t do shared rooms. Even in London. I can’t help wondering if it was written in some other way and an American money man complained? It’s possible that it was written this way, American culture influences anglophone films a lot, and “any fool knows” students share rooms. But in Britain that’s only in the movies. In Sex Education the school is, in some ways, clearly British, but in others clearly American - we don’t have lockers, letterman jackets and the like - but America does, and so “international TV schools” - like for a Netflix show - do.

Back to Ellie and Sandie swapping places, or Ellie having visions of herself in Sandie’s place. There are scenes, for example Sandie dances to show off for Jack. He joins her and the camera fixes on him. As Sandie moves around him, we sometimes have Sandie and sometimes Ellie dancing with him. It’s not actually hard to see how it’s done but it still looks spectacular, and tells the story.

This is billed as a horror movie and I think that’s fair. But it’s not a slasher and it doesn’t really rely on jump scares - Ellie jumps but we see it coming and that builds tension in a different way. There is one jump scare, but even that is pretty well signalled, so it feels like it’s earned rather than random - perhaps because there’s only one, it doesn’t feel like it’s what the film relies on for it’s horror? It’s much more a psychological horror. You can read this as an over-sensitive young woman having a breakdown, or treat it as reality, she’s psychic and over time her powers break down the walls of time between the 60’s, particularly where Sandie is, and the present day. There’s a read, explicitly stated within the film but harder for me to accept that it’s just country mouse not coping with the big city. I can’t guess how it will land with anyone else because of this. I found it tense and disturbing but in a good way. I don’t like a lot of modern horror movies, too many rely on an excess of gore or jump scares for me, but I do like some horror movies and this one hit the mark for me.

You can argue, I think very successfully, that this is an examination of how society has changed in 60 years. It’s a parallel story of two young women coming to London and how both London, but also wider society, treated them. While I’m not going to dive into that, because spoilers, seeing Matt Smith play bad was both a delight and chilling. I think that sense of a horror film with a wider social context and story helped keep me interested. If it’s just about racking up the bodies, the jump scares, the gore, then I get bored.

What attracted me to this film, from the first time I saw the trailer, was the music. And boy does the music work here, at least for me. Almost all of the music is 60’s music, more importantly 60’s music with female singers. Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark and so on. The only time I remember we broke out of the 60’s we had Siouxsee and the Banshees, so another iconic woman singer.

There’s a beautiful twist I really should have seen coming, just to round it off. The clues were there, I misread them slightly. There was a scene after the one I thought was the final one that brought tears to my eyes.

I really enjoyed this film. It worked for me on multiple levels. It’s not just let’s kill as many people in as many horrific ways as we can, nor is it just ways to make you jump. There’s a story. It relies on you buying in to the idea that Ellie might be psychic, but there are other possibilities so you only have to think it’s a possibility rather than the absolute truth. We don’t get enough of that these days. And with the story and the twist it feels satisfying, like a good twist should. I know M. Night Shyamalan is a bit of a joke for his rickety plots and wild twists these days. But if you remember Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and to some extent Split and Glass (you might include The Village, I guessed the twist really early and it ruined it for me, I worked out the twist in Sixth Sense but still enjoyed it), I think the twist here lands better than Shyalaman's better ones. If that sounds appealing, then you’ll probably enjoy Last Night in Soho.

Bechdel Test: Pass. We have all kinds of conversations between multiple named women. Ellie and her gran, her landlady, Sandie, Jocasta, her lecturer, her boss when she gets a job at a pub (we do hear her name) and so on. Hardly any of these conversations are about men, although there are a few that are.

Ko Test: Fail. There are a few WOC around and I think they have odd spoken lines, but not many. There may be enough for a joint pass, but no individual does.

Russo Test: Fail. In one sense I’m not surprised by this, over half the film takes place in the 60’s and it’s still illegal, so we wouldn’t see it. Particularly in the places Sandie works. Ellie being into men (she could be bi, but we don’t see any signs of that) is actually kind of a relief. We briefly see Jocasta is into men as part of the whole “OMG she’s a terrible roommate, I’ve got to move out” intro but that’s it. Even if they made Jocasta bring a lady friend home for her night of inconsiderate sex, it’s arguable that she’d fail.