Thinking about Last Night in Soho (spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

I saw it a couple of days ago. Not the movie I was expecting from the trailer. I was thinking this was going to be a murder mystery with some supernatural elements. This was more of a ghost story.

I don’t mind a supernatural story. But a decent supernatural story has to establish its rules and then stick to them. And I’m trying to figure out what the rules were in this movie.

Last warning: Spoilers ahead

Okay, some theories:

  1. Sandy, Jack, and the others were ghosts. They had died back in the sixties and Ellie was seeing them in the present. We know Ellie could see ghosts because it was established early on that she could see her mother.

Problems with this theory: Living people don’t have ghosts. We spend most of the movie thinking Jack was still alive. And we found out that Sandy was still alive. So whatever Ellie was seeing, it wasn’t Sandy’s ghost.

We also saw things other than people. Ellie was seeing entire buildings which wouldn’t have had ghosts.

  1. Ellie was crazy. She was hallucinating her mother, Sandy, Jack, and all of the scenes in the sixties.

Problems with this theory: Mrs Collins confessed to being Sandy and confirmed Ellie’s visions at the end of the movie. Ellie could have hallucinated this as well, but John survived and corroborated that Mrs Collins really did try to kill them.

  1. Ellie was traveling through time with her visions. Ellie had the power to see events that had occurred in the sixties.

Problems with this theory: Ellie was seeing her visions in the present day as well. So were the visions time traveling into their future while Ellie was time traveling into her past? That seems too much.

We also saw that Ellie was interacting with her visions. If she was really traveling to the past and interacting with people in the sixties, this raises the whole “changing the past” issue which the movie never mentioned.

  1. Ellie was a telepath. She wasn’t actually seeing ghosts or any other external entities. What she was doing was subconsciously reading Mrs Collins’ thoughts. Mrs Collins, as we saw, was crazy and she kept thinking about her past life. When Ellie moved into the house she began picking up on these thoughts and projecting them into visions. Ellie wasn’t really seeing her mother’s ghost either. She was just picking up her grandmother’s memories. This is why she only saw her mother when her grandmother was around.

Problems with this theory: This one also doesn’t explain how Ellie physically interacted with her visions. This theory also doesn’t explain why Ellie saw Sandy at the end of the movie, after Mrs Collins was dead.

2

I saw it last night. It wasn’t bad, but it was a mess. I can’t actually recommend it. I can’t really describe the movie that well.

I appreciate you trying to figure out what was intended, but nothing is logical in the end about the movie.

3

After writing a long post like the OP, I’m just glad somebody read it.

4

I started to watch this film some months ago after really looking forward to it. I was absolutely enthralled by the opening dance number and then I fell asleep. That’s what I get for starting a movie in the evening while lying on the couch.

I tried and succeeded in watching the whole thing yesterday and I loved it. Admittedly, it was a bit confusing. I watched it with someone who had never heard of it and had no idea what it was about going in and I wondered if he was getting it; I had read a lot about it, including the ending, so I basically knew what was going on but wasn’t sure how it looked to someone going in blind. Other than initially thinking the present time was the 70s (due to the soundtrack and Eloise’s homemade outfit) he totally got it.

To the OP’s questions, I just took it as Ellie had psychic abilities and was “seeing” Sandie’s story. She wasn’t literally interacting with Sandie or anybody else; just experiencing her visions in first person. I know that doesn’t explain the manifestation of the hickey Jack gave her but that does seem to be the kind of thing that happens in these kind of stories. Think Samara’s hand print on Rachel’s arm in The Ring or dirt in Louis’s bed in Pet Sematary. That being said, they could have left that bit out as it does imply she (Ellie) has physically interacted with Jack, when it’s Sandie’s neck he actually sucked on.

My biggest “complaint”, story-wise, is the inclusion of Ellie’s visions of her mother in the mirror. I thought it was going to turn out that Ms. Collins was her mother or that there would be some connection, but I guess it’s just there to tell us about Ellie’s psychic abilities. Seems like a lost opportunity.

I look forward to watching it again to see how the pieces fit together. And also to enjoy the fabulous period costumes, music and dancing.

5

I think you’re thought this out much more thoroughly than the writers of the movie.

I think some combination of 1, 2 and 4. But, it’s definitely not clear to me.