Movie Review: Last Night in Soho (2021)

Last Night in Soho (2021) co-written and directed by Edgar Wright

Eloise (Thomasina McKenzie) is a small-town girl in love with the 1960s and fashion design. She's accepted at a prestigious design university in London and is excited to go live big-city life. College is not quite what she expected. Her roommate is overbearing and the party atmosphere of the dorm is too much for her. She finds a room-to-let with an old lady (Dianna Rigg) and things start to settle down. As Eloise sleeps one night, she has a vivid dream where she is Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), an aspiring singer who moves to London in the 1960s and wants to break into the nightclub scene. Sandie is a bit more confident and free-spirited than Eloise. Sandie gets help from Jack (Matt Smith) who has worked with other girls on their careers. Jack is smitten with Sandie and they do some passionate making-out. Eloise wakes up with a hickey on her neck though happy about her encouraging dream. Her fellow students tease her a bit roughly. Eloise starts designing a dress that Sandie wore. Eloise has more dreams and follows Sandie's career, which becomes darker and much less happy. The psychological pressure and Eloise's highly-empathetic nature wear her down. Is she going crazy? Was there really a Sandie who lived in that room? And what about that sinister guy on the street (Terrence Stamp) who is giving Eloise too much attention?

The fish-out-of-water comedy set-up of the film quickly morphs into a more challenging psychological horror. Eloise lost her mother early and is haunted by memories of her, often seeing her mom in mirrors. In her dreams, Eloise shows up (mostly) as the reflection of Sandie, which starts as fun but becomes a lot more uncomfortable as Sandie's prospects and expectations changes. Eloise struggles with her identity and her place in the world, much like most university students. Some people are helpful to her but others are awful and she doesn't have enough life experience to sort things out, creating a lot of high drama and jeopardy for her. It's fascinating and hard to guess where it's going.

The movie is very creative visually. In addition to the thematic use of mirrors, it also takes full advantage of the 1960s fashions and club scenes. The color palette is very deliberate, sometimes imitating Vertigo. The movie is also very unnerving--I was worried about half-way through that this would be the "feel bad" movie of the year, much like 2019's Joker. The story comes to a satisfying conclusion for at least some of the characters.

Recommended.