“The Last Showgirl” Review

Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is the type of film that feels tailor-made for someone like Pamela Anderson. This is a film all about the end of an era. When was the last time you thought about the career of a Las Vegas showgirl in a musical stage show? When did you last think of Pamela Anderson or see her in anything? There was a time when you probably thought about them more regularly, but all good things end. This film is about the bittersweet end of all those aspects and more.

Anderson plays the hard-working Shelly, who takes her showgirl job seriously. While other girls have gone off to dance in strip clubs, Shelly remains devoted to her art form of feathers and stage presence, which she doesn’t reasonably consider pornographic. Her only friend who seems to get that motivation is Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former showgirl and current waitress at a casino. She’s lived a long enough life that she’s long since grown numb to old men grabbing her butt and placing dollars in her cleavage. What else is there to do at such an age? Annette plans to work this job until she dies, embracing that there’s nothing more in life than clinging to the booze and glamour.

Trying to build more of a connection with Shelly is the revue producer, Eddie (Dave Bautista). At the revue, he’s all business as he runs a tight ship. Outside work, he’s a cautious man trying to speak to Shelly carefully. He wants to date her but must also deliver the bad news of the revue’s final days, making every conversation a walking on eggshells. Shelly is more interested in trying to repair the relationship with her daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), but those conversations are not easy either. Regret coats Shelly’s life as much as the feathery costumes she wears at work.

There are some earnest conversations in the film of great drama and plenty of contemplative moments. There’s something sweetly sad about how Shelly quietly strolls around Las Vegas, looking upon all the monuments of yesteryear as though they were relics from the fall of Rome. The last revue is coming; she’ll soon be part of a dead profession. Annette experiences this acceptance early in her meaningful dance on the casino tables, presented with a melancholy acceptance of living in the moment and realizing how few are left.

There’s also an admiration for how Shelly still longs for something more. Her evenings are spent studying past dances, taking great wonder in the elegance of the art. At work, she clashes with the other showgirls, played by Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka, being younger and more eager to transition into the profitable lifestyle of being strippers. It’s a downgrade that Shelly fights right up to her reluctant audition, where she bites back at the scrutinizing casting director (Jason Schwartzman). Her frustrations with how the world has turned away from glossy shows to sexy slop can be felt in that fury for how little control she holds over the entertainment industry.

A bittersweet sensation washes over The Last Showgirl with its fantastic ensemble and poignant tale of eras ending. It’s a film where all the characters can see the writing on the wall and try to find something more before the clock runs out. It’s a quietly painful search that takes on a transcendent numbness the more it goes on. The resonance an entire generation will feel with this film can’t be overlooked, where the young and old view the future as uncertain. There’s hope of retirement for these folks; only dancing and drinking until the day you die. It’s scary, but not as scary with the connections you make and the passions you share.