Gemma Creagh takes a front-row seat for The Last Showgirl.
The blinding house lights open as the gorgeous Pamela Anderson as showgirl Shelly Gardener takes centre stage. She chatters nervously, lying about her age. It’s been a while since her last audition. She’s prepared an act and the music is with the maestro. Her charm, vulnerability and desperation set the scene for yet another tale of tragedy set in Las Vegas. The Last Showgirl is a thoughtful and deft character study which charts similar terrain to Aronofsky’s 2008’s The Wrestler. If you’ve done something all your life, what else can you do?
Offbeat, dreamlike, and sometimes challenging, the unravelling narrative follows a chorus of performers as their Las Vegas show comes to a close after 30 years. Shelly exudes a near delusional sentimentality as she recounts her glory days to her colleagues, Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), both of a younger generation who don’t see the same appeal. Mary-Anne is jaded by the industry as she enters her 30s, while Jodie—something of an ingénue—sees Shelly as a mother figure. Together with former dancer and present cocktail waitress Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), these women form a small, surrogate family. When the producer of the venue, Eddie (Dave Bautista), announces that the show is set to close, Shelly’s world crumbles.
With wages so low, saving was near impossible, and now all three dancers face a plethora of harsh realities as they plan what’s next. Struggling to let go, Shelly instead sets her gaze to the past. After getting the news, she reaches out to her estranged daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), who reluctantly visits. Hannah shares how she plans to study at art school. Shelly professes her delight at Hannah following in her footsteps. Hannah recoils at the comparison, years of tension bubbling under the surface. Meanwhile, in her job at the casino, Annette loses shifts to younger servers, then sinks the little earnings she makes back into the casino. With no support and no backup plan, the future for these women is uncertain to say the least.
The performances and chemistry between this mostly female cast—representing the struggle of womanhood through three generations—are captivating. Pamela Anderson plays Shelly, an overgrown dreamer, lacing each scene with pain, her grief and discomfort palpable. Anderson is a woman whose real-life celebrity has come at a cost. And to think, this script was almost missed, having been originally turned down by her agent. Kiernan Shipka, familiar to Mad Men fans as young Sally Draper, imbues Jodie with an earnestness—these are life lessons hard learned for her. Meanwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis is magnetic, raw, and authentic. She delivers an unapologetic performance as Annette, a character who, upon losing her shirt to the house, proceeds to writhe as she dances on a podium—a scene Curtis brings such power and agency to. Finally, Las Vegas itself plays a role, oscillating its on screen representation between the glamorous home of glitzy lights and as a decrepit desolate wasteland.
Technically, this film leans into certain abstract and experimental qualities. Shelly, as our subject, proves to be an unreliable narrator, and this is explored through the visual tapestry. Her skewed, immovable perspective threatens to cause her downfall. At times, she dances on the strip, in the dust and dirt, reliving the past. While this all makes for a striking and cinematic story, die-hard fans of Barb Wire or those looking for a warm, fuzzy and easily digestible tale of redemption will be disappointed.
Based on her play Body of Work, Kate Gersten’s script retains some theatrical traits. Quite often, earth-shattering revelations are tossed about through expositional dialogue, and plot takes a back seat in favour of character. It’s the everyday beats charting the struggles of the working class in the US that are the most interesting, yet do go underexplored. The writing of these women is sharp, clever and well observed, with the slow reveal of information timed perfectly as we form our opinion of Shelly. Initially, she is presented as something of a victim, a woman suffering in unfair circumstances, until the true price she paid for her career is unearthed. These are messy and untethered women. Shelly ignores Jodie’s pleas for help, while Annette is impulsive and rough around the edges, yet the bond all these women share remains intact. No one is a villain, saint or a martyr. They are all struggling to cope in their own way.
Just like those women, this film is by no means perfect. However, the following cannot be stressed enough: attaining this level of production, with those depths of performances, with this calibre of actors, on a $2 million budget is a monumental accomplishment. No matter what your connections. Now, as it’s about to hit cinemas across the world, The Last Showgirl will achieve the unthinkable for most indie films—make its money back. Director Gia Coppola does such a clever and succinct job of building this world, allowing for quite a vast scope, while limiting what we actually see on screen. And in terms of storytelling, this is an ambitious next step for her career. She previously charted disaffected youths of privilege in Palo Alto, outlandish influencers in the comedy Mainstream, and her acclaimed short Casino Moon, also tracked life and love on the strip. However, The Last Showgirl examines themes that are so much deeper and darker, and does them justice.
If this trajectory continues, and she gets the studio backing that this film has surely earned her, Gia Coppola’s next project could be something truly groundbreaking.
The Last Showgirl is in cinemas 28th February 2025.
