The Cornetto Trilogy is long gone. No more Shaun, Fuzz and World’s End with his old friends Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The three of them are still besties, but Edgar Wright is a grown man and director now, since his latest movie Baby Driver, a tribute to Walter Hill’s Driver. And now he comes back home to London and the movies that made him.
“Last Night in Soho is the result of 25 years of living and working in Soho,” says Edgar Wright of his sixth feature. “I spent so much time looking at the architecture, thinking, ‘What have these walls seen?’ And walking the streets late at night. Soho’s become a lot more gentrified, but it still has that darkness just under the surface. It’s one of those places where you only need to stand still for 60 seconds for something strange or magical or weird or dark to happen”.
Last Night in Soho is written by Wright together Krysty Wilson-Cairns. 2019: Eloise arrives in London coming from the countryside to make her dream come true: becoming a fashion designer. But the dream soon becomes a nightmare. 1965: Sandy is a singer who discovers that the yellow brick road of the big city has deep cracks that can make you disappear. The life of these two will amazingly intersect.
For those not very familiar with London, Soho is the district right behind Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Street. The legendary Carnaby Street is one the most touristic destination in town, but the real Soho are still the dirty alleys fill with sex shops and strip clubs.
The stars of Last Night in Soho are two young actresses with a bright future ahead. Sandy is Anya Taylor-Joy who after the huge success of Netflix’s The Queens Gambit came back on Robert Eggers’ The Northman and now she’s waiting for Furiosa, the origin story of the character played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road. Eloise is Thomasin McKenzie who’s also part of the cast of The Power of the Dog and fresh from Shyamalan’s Old. The cast is completed by Matt Smith (the first prince Philip of The Crown) and three great stars from the past, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham and Terence Stamp, icons of the Swingin’ London of Mary Quant, Rolling Stones and Free Cinema. And not by chance Edgar Wright is the curator of a retrospective of the movies that inspired him for this movie. It will take place at British Film Institute in London in October and November.
