Review of Last Night in Soho (2021) by Mauro_Lanari — 28 Nov 2021

(Mauro Lanari).

Eros and Thanatos of importation, at least for those who are not Japanese or British. Lolithism (if not even worse) has landed among us young Westerners through manga and anime: even today, when some site requires me to disable the adblock, advertising for a porn movie of that category can pop up; instead the late adolescent malaise, anguish, disturbance reached us through the English music that we called dark while it was correct to define it goth rock, a contamination with the occultism of Ossianic mythology. 21-year-old Thomasin McKenzie is simply perfect in her provocative Japanese comic book role: oval face, big eyes, lips, chin and breathtaking breasts. For the dance at the Halloween party, the choice of "Happy House" (1980) of Siouxsie and the Banshees is equally perfect in evoking unhealthy and spiritic atmospheres. Furthermore: the film states several times to be set in swinging London, in the beat generation of the second half of the 60s, yet it begins with "A World Without Love", a song written by McCartney and left to be recorded in February '64 by the duo Peter and Gordon precisely because The Beatles were about to make the big leap from beat to rock / brit pop (December 1965: "Rubber Soul"); the same for "(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave" in the beat version of The Who of '65. A remarkable temporal and cultural phase shift, as much as the mother-daughter doubling (Jocasta?), the multiple doppelgangers (Lynch) and mirror games (Welles), as well as the entire first half of the film that enjoys confusing dream and reality as in the video, shot by Michel Gondry, of "Let Forever Be" by the Chemical Brothers (1999).