Two films befitting for Halloween viewing, both starring Anya Taylor-Joy, whose ascendency seems unstoppable. Edgar Wright's LAST NIGHT IN SOHO is a trippy collection of the Swinging Sixties's reminiscences, through a paranormal connection to the present, a ghost story surfaces, debunking the era's modish allure and glamor, and uncovering its dark underbelly.
Eloise (McKenzie), a Cornwall girl who is stoked to study at the London College of Fashion, aspires to be a fashion designer, othered from her contemporaries for having an "old soul" and obsessed with the 1960s coolth. Moving into a bedsit and playing an oldie on her portable monograph before sleep, Eloise is transported to a dreamlike spatio-temporality of that bygone era, witnessing and sometimes becoming a young girl Sandie (Taylor-Joy), who aims to be a club singer, and soon hits it off with a raffish manager Jack (Smith), who secure her an audition in a Soho nightclub.
Thrilled and galvanized by her psychic experience, Eloise emulates Sandie's appearance and her Sandie-inspired costume design gets good notice for her professor. However, Sandie doesn't make it as a top-line artiste in Eloise's nightly dream-space, and menacing, blur-faced figures materialize like apparitions to haunt Eloise, even during day time. After convinced that Sandie is bloodily murdered by Jack in a frenzy of rage, who pimps her out to his business associates, Eloise determines to revenge her and identifies an old patron of the bar (Stamp) where she moonlights as Jack. But the whole truth lies right in the building where she stays, a drugged cuppa, a serial killer and conflagration are around the corner, which works up the Eloise/Sandie dyad to a satisfactory finish, gelling in a sisterly rapport and a happy ending for Eloise to thrive on her vocation.
Bursting with retro-flair, bisexual lighting, hallucinogenic ambience and later, spectral visitations, LAST NIGHT IN SOHO's greatest asset is its visual pageantry, Wright also dazzles audience with his prestidigitation of mirror illusions, juxtaposing Eloise and Sandie in the same frame. The script has enough juice to entice viewers and leave them hooked, but slacks off in the second half, resorting to dispatch a key character with a random car accident, also the scenes in the police office have no correlation to the main story, might better be left in the editing room. McKenzie comports herself well with a babe-in-the-woods alacrity, and Taylor-Joy nails the vintage glamour puss to a T!
The film is also the swan song of Diana Rigg (1938-2020), whose Ms. Collins, the amicable landlady at first glance, is quite vital in the plot. Rigg performs with all the mighty left in her, sometimes approachable and sympathetic, other times a ball of mystery with a sinister register, which marks a memorable valediction for this legendary English screen icon.
British filmmaker Mark Mylod's THE MENU (his fourth feature film after his toiling in the TV field finally pays dividends with GAME OF THRONES and SUCCESSION under his belt) takes place at an exclusive restaurant on a private island, 12 wealthy gastro-patrons are invited by its renowned chef Slowik (Fiennes), only Margot Mills (Taylor-Joy), the date of Taylor Ledford (Hoult, too facetious and disengaged to sustain his marbles), is the wild card, because her name is not on the guest list, she is chosen by Taylor as a substitute for his date, who breaks up with him.
A fine-dining experience soon turns ominous and uneasy when it dawns on the guests that Slowik and his staff are in a kamikaze mission to leave no one left alive, everyone is part of "the menu" and the final course for dessert is a s'mores. After some abortive attempt of escaping, of which the film doesn't make a meal, the guests are resigned to their doomed fate (talking about the elite class's effectuality), except for Margot, who doesn't belong to that class and whose unforthcoming provenance piques Slowik's concern, he needs to decide which group she belongs to, the guests or the kitchen staff (not that their designated outcome would be any different).
The story only works if audience can subscribe to Slowik's disillusion, who takes it into his head to wage war on the vice in our society which has ruined his passion for his profession, and we could only suspend our disbelief that the whole staff is willing to drink the Kool-Aid for his rather self-centered cause. So, if there is a way out, Margot must reignite Slowik's passion, and it is exactly what she manages to pull off after delving more into his past, offering "food" the pure pleasure both for the one who eats it and the one who makes it.
While THE MENU consciously pulls punch with the violent elements (finger-chopping and a death-dealing scuffle in the kitchen is all she wrote), it plays more like a discomfiting mind game which reflects on today's hoity-toity and pretentious fad in gastronomy, it is no longer the taste buds the industry strives for gratify, but a certain illusive feel-goodism under the disguise of a granola slant and exotic curiosity.
However, as a film, THE MENU aims high but hits merely in the middle, wielding its "punish the rich" flag, it never induces audience to cease questioning about the credibility of the whole nine yards, not to mention a trite episode of false hope to temporarily ginger up the somber mood. Just like the people it is leveled to mock and chide, Mylod's film is colored by its own pretension, appropriating omnipotence to state its point, it is too neat to strike a chord.
Although an outstanding Taylor-Joy does cut it to be a heroine one can root for, and Hong Chau makes a big splash as the diligent, impassive sous-chef Elsa, whose tough comportment and biting barbs might account for how the staff is brainwashed by Slowik to a slavish point. THE MENU 's MVP is a top-form Fiennes, who collectedly inhabits Slowik's extremist mind-scape, in tandem with a whiff of world-weariness and derangement. Behold Slowik's reaction to Margot's bold request of taking away the cheeseburger, the nuances in his expression betray a sea-change in his mind, that is a performance on the stratospheric level, of precision and evocation. Time and again, it makes Your Truly wonder when will his ship finally come in? In case anyone forgets, his last Oscar nomination is for Anthony Minghella's THE ENGLISH PATIENT (1996).
referential entries: Wright's BABY DRIVER (2017, 7.2/10); Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011, 6.4/10); Nicolas Winding Refn's THE NEON DEMON (2016, 7.5/10); Rian Johnson's GLASS ONION (2022, 7.4/10).
Title: Last Night in Soho
Year: 2021
Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
Country: UK, China
Language: English
Director: Edgar Wright
Screenwriters: Edgar Wright, Krysty Wilson-Cairns
Music: Steven Price
Cinematography: Chung Chung-hoo
Editor: Paul Mchliss
Cast:
Thomasin McKenzie
Anya Taylor-Joy
Diana Rigg
Matt Smith
Michael Ajao
Terence Stamp
Synnove Karlsen
Pauline McLynn
Rita Tushingham
Sam Claflin
Beth Singh
Paul Brightwell
James Phelps
Oliver Phelps
Margaret Nolan
Michael Jibson
Lisa McGrillis
Rating: 7.0/10
Title: The Menu
Year: 2022
Genre: Comedy, Thriller
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish
Director: Mark Mylod
Screenwriters: Seth Reiss, Will Tracy
Music: Colin Stetson
Cinematography: Peter Deming
Editor: Christopher Tellefsen
Cast:
Anya Taylor-Joy
Ralph Fiennes
Nicholas Hoult
Hong Chau
Janet McTeer
Paul Adelstein
John Leguizamo
Aimee Carrero
Reed Birney
Judith Light
Rob Yang
Arturo Castro
Mark St. Cyr
Rebecca Koon
Peter Grosz
Christina Brucato
Adam Aalderks
Matthew Cornwell
Rating: 6.8/10
