Edgar Wright
Ultima notte a Soho

THE REVIEW

"In the '60s, in England, in a quiet house, there lived a girl named Sandie who dreamed of a fairy-tale world. She dreamed of dancing, the stage, and the audience. One day, she left home and fled to London. She rented a room in Soho, Goodge Place, no. 8. Here, the blinding lights of the Neon signs dazzled her. She had entered the carousel. The music, the lights, success seemed real; the courtesies and love sincere. She felt like a princess.

She thus erased her memory, forgot who she was and where she came from.

Suddenly, the dream turned into a nightmare.

From that moment, the music and lights became silence and darkness, the courtesies and love became violence and abuse, and after a few months, that girl died in her room.

Sixty years later, in Cornwall, in a quiet country house, lives Eloise. Ellie has the power to see the ghosts of the past and, she too, loves the '60s and dreams of going to London to become famous: she wants to be a great designer. To make her dream come true, she leaves home and soon finds herself in Soho, Goodge Place, no. 8.

Here, every night, she will have to meet Sandie's past ghosts and solve her story to save herself and fulfill her dream."

Last Night in Soho, which centers on Ellie's story, is a dramatic film with horror tints, fabulously, wonderfully, and astonishingly made. Within it, various references to the history of cinema can be found—from the dark fairy tale to the musical, from zombie cinema to spy cinema, from Pulp Fiction to Polanski's apartment trilogy—linked in an original way.

Although some relational dynamics between the characters tend towards the college movie (Ellie meets Sandie for the first time while seeking a way out from her relationships with the obnoxious classmates), the narrative is well crafted: the story featuring Ellie and the one featuring Sandie, the one of the present and the one of the past, of reality and of the dream, are separated at the beginning of the film, but soon they mix and intertwine in Ellie's life. The transition from one reality to the other is always convincing because it is made fluid by skilled use of camera movements, editing, soundtrack, and a remarkable play of lights and mirrors.

The tension increases in a calibrated manner throughout the film's duration, coherently holding together scenes of different colors. It moves from the brightness of the fairy tale of the girl who becomes a princess to the darkness of the zombies emerging from the false ceiling of the Goodge Place house, from the pink of the '60s fashion to the red of the blood that will flow and the fire that will blaze in the final resolution of the story.

Last Night in Soho celebrates the music and arts of the sixties while disintegrating its myth: it unveils the sordid reality hidden behind the famed beauty.

The final result is thus a delight for the eyes and ears, but also nourishment for the soul and the brain.