‘LAST NIGHT IN SOHO’

Reader beware, serious PLOT SPOILERS ahead!

Edgar Wright’s new film (he of ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and ‘The World’s End’) could be described less as good than as bravura. It’s a whirlygig of experiences, but unlike many films which go into psychological horror territory it holds them within a perfectly structured story. And the two leads, Thomasin McKenzie as Ellie and Anya Taylor-Joy as Sandie, are well cast.

Stuffed with so many hallucinogenic scenes, the film has the wit to work out any kind of heightened dialogue would overegg things. So it devises regular-sounding speech which still has a way of working on you. The repeated line about London being “a bit much”, it’s one of those phrases whose oxymoronic oddness only becomes apparent when you strip it of its familiarity.

Similarly, the boyfriend’s line about being a stranger too in London because he’s from south London… it’s one of those funny-because-it’s true moments. Or egocentric posh student Jocasta announcing she’s only to be known by her first name, in order to make herself a brand, the character helpfully nailing herself for us on first meeting.

Though widely compared to ‘Repulsion’ (1965), even by its own director, in a sense it’s more an anti-‘Repulsion’. The challenging thing about the Polanski is that its masterfully inventive and entirely unsurprising it was made by a rapist, making its subject matter out of female hysteria. (A challenge so larger that most seem only able to see one or the other of these things.)

True enough, there’s a similar creative tension here over whether what protagonist Ellie sees is real or vision, and consequently over whether she’s cracking up or not. But while this works moment-to-moment we know, in fact we’re told very early on, that she has some sort of psychic ability.

And the film would simply not function without this; we know she’s witnessing something, even if we - and her - aren’t always sure what. She calls this a “gift”. And though of course it becomes part-curse this inevitably steers her towards being a more pro-active character, even if she does spend a fair amount of time screaming and running.

She sees, at first through dreams, the unfolding life of another young woman, Sandie, from Sixties Soho. In fact, rather than ‘Repulsion’ this is an English ‘Mulholland Drive’, with the central character is essentially split into two roles. In fact we see the split as it happens…

Sandie sometimes reflects Ellie (literally, in mirrors), sometimes observes her. As Sandie’s introduced she sashays into a club, radiating confidence, intent upon stardom. As she descends the stairs Ellie’s reflected in a wall mirror. But while Sandie sports a glamorous dress, Ellie’s still in her night clothes. We then see her deliberately dressing more like Sandie, as if she has an imaginary role model.

But Sandie’s route to stardom is derailed by dodgy ‘boyfriend’ Jack, who’s soon domineeringly pimping her. At one point, meeting one of many prospective clients in a club he suggests this is not the life for her, and that she should look in the mirror. She refuses, not wanting to see what she now is. Which of course means she won’t look at Ellie, who responds by flailing hopelessly at the separating glass.

As all this might suggest the film goes to some pretty dark places. We see Sandie trapped not just in prostitution but its inevitable bedfellow, abuse and violence. Now, films are entitled to go to dark places. Provided they don’t treat the material salaciously. (Which this doesn’t.) But also, there needs to be some pressing purpose to take them there, an end to justify those means. And I confess I’m not quite sure what the point of all this is.

Wright has given a personal motivation, that he felt seduced by the supposed innocence of the Sixties and wanted to show their underbelly. He’s said: "Something that I find truly nightmarish… is the danger of being overly nostalgic about previous decades. In a way, the film is about romanticising the past and why it's ... wrong to do that.” The scene where Sandie first enters the club is essentially a filmic scene inserted into a film, after which we see more of the reality.

And I can sympathise with this, it’s the decade I missed too and so held a similar fascination with it through most of my teens. (Though I was more about the Beatles and the Doors than Petula Clarke.) But this doesn’t seem enough. It more explains the setting than justifies the film.

In the end, Sandie tells Ellie she can’t save her but only herself. So is the point how much things have changed for the better since then? The first sign we’re back in the Sixties is literally a sign, the ‘Thunderball’ poster with Connery adorned by bikini babes like accessories. And it may well be the differences to ‘Repulsion’ are those between a film set in the Sixties and one made then.

But overall the film goes out of its way to tell us the opposite. A leery taxi driver tells Ellie the old London’s still there underneath, a point proven when she starts finding landmarks from her dreams in her waking surroundings.

Ellie can only see Sandie as a victim. Trying to research her murder she scrolls past newspaper headlines of disappeared men, oblivious to the fact it’s Sandie who killed all of them. But, with the exception of Jack, she doesn’t kill them in self-defence but out of revenge. (Again, somewhat disappointingly, prostitution is seen as coming through another’s individual malevolence and a moral fall, rather than economic pressures.) So they’re traditional ghosts, hanging around this place because they’ve been wronged. Their haunting of Ellie suggests a displaced haunting of Sandie. The film gestures at the moral complexity of this, but ultimately seems unsure how to deal with it.

Is the point that Sandie’s life reached a point where she could only be consumed by revenge? She continues living in the same house, stacked with bodies of her murdered 'clients', and when it burns down she has to burn with it too. Of course ‘let the dead be dead’ is a familiar moral of ghost stories. But what are we supposed to do with this here? If anything it seems to lead back to where we were, that she inhabited a time which offered her no escape. A point that the film raises to dispel. It all seems something of a circle.

As said, the film excels in terms of structure. But there are two big weaknesses. Mostly it doesn’t just maintain consistency but is deft at foreshadowing. Ellie’s landlady tells her she’ll need to keep the plugs in the sinks to stop the smell, and only lately do we discover this is Sandie with her dead bodies and join the dots. 

But the Terrence Stamp character is originally described to Ellie warningly by someone from the pub as an “octopus”, a sexual predator. Then, once he has died, someone else from the pub says he was a cop who tried to help victimised women. Which feels like cheap misdirection. (And anyone who knows anything about the Met’s Vice Squad of the era knows being a cop from then is less alibi than evidence of guilt.)

And the putative boyfriend, John, really doesn’t have much character beyond well-meaning. He’s essentially a plot function, someone Ellie can talk to, can try doing normal things with, masquerading as a character. There’s one brief line about him having an Aunt who “believes in weird stuff”, which isn’t exactly sufficient.

This does seem symptomatic of a tendency in ‘women’s issue’ films to have one male character who’s unfailingly nice, as if to counter any objections the film has an anti-male agenda. Even ‘Repulsion’ had one! But it’s scarcely going to quiet the Men’s Rights Advocate mob who are not exactly coming from a position of good faith, and should really be resisted.