The Last Showgirl
★★★★ | Leaving Las Vegas
The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola, could work beautifully as a companion piece to Mickey Rourke’s The Wrestler. The fact that it’s taken this long to get a female counterpart is downright criminal. Especially as, based on the evidence, it has robbed us of years of brilliant performances from Pamela Anderson, who delivers a career-defining turn as the titular showgirl.
This is not a big film. In fact, it barely has a beginning and an end. In the grand scheme of things, its events are so minuscule they happen every day. Shelley (Anderson) is an aging showgirl in a town that thrives on the illusion of eternal youth. Her show, Razzle Dazzle, is a relic of a past age, and is coming to an end whether she will admit it or not. To her, this is the last “classy” joint in town. A memory of what Las Vegas used to be. Nobody else, not even the girls who work on the show, see it that way. To them, it’s a means to an end. An embarrassing pit stop on the way to a real career.
So when word comes down the line that Razzle Dazzle will officially close, it signals an end to everything Shelley has worked and lived for. The younger cast are annoyed. This means auditioning and learning new routines. But Shelley has no such prospects. This is it for her, at least in any meaningful way. Her best friend, Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), tells her to keep her chin up. She’s a former showgirl too, now working as a cocktail waitress in one of the numerous casinos, gambling her money away in an effort to pretend her life isn’t as it is.
In the meantime, Shelley’s estranged daughter comes to visit for the first time in years. The stage manager for Razzle Dazzle, Eddie (Dave Bautista), tries to be a friend despite his awkward demeanor and their rocky history. Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), the youngest member of the troupe, reaches out to Shelley as a surrogate mom. All as the show goes on from one empty performance to the next.
We never see the show, by the way. It’s talked about at length, and we hear how people perceive it in both reality and their dreams. But it’s ultimately irrelevant to the story. Everything that is interesting takes place in the remarkably expressive face of Pamela Anderson, and we stick by her from the first frame onward.
Anderson is a revelation. Her performance is nuanced, subtle, and heartbreaking. It should make us ask if she was capable of work like this all along, and how we, the audience and the producers, worked overtime to box her into a limited scope for decades. If there is justice, this is the beginning of a revitalized career. Anderson is clearly up for it.
After the screening, I heard colleagues complain about the limited scope. In theory, you could argue that nothing happens, and I’d say you were still wrong. Everything happens here. Momentous things take place and someone’s world is forever changed. The fact that we see it as pointless says more about us than the story. Coppola’s minimalist gaze strips away the gaudy lights of Las Vegas and all the opulence we’ve come to expect from it. Instead, she highlights the coziness of the home Shelley has put together from things she finds attractive. None of them should match, yet she makes it work.
A lesser filmmaker would paint this as a story of failures, which it isn’t. It’s a story of survivors who make the best of what they’ve got, even as the world takes more away. Led by a brave and commanding performance by Anderson, it’s an immediate and moving portrait that speaks of great truths whispered in the grimy dressings rooms of the world.