The Last Showgirl - Review

What is it to be an artist? Who qualifies as an artist? And what happens to the artist when the foundational structures they have built their career come tumbling down? These are the questions at the forefront of The Last Showgirl, a female-centric piece directed by Gia Coppola, starring the impervious Pamela Anderson as a seasoned showgirl, a role that seems written for the former Baywatch actress, still known more for her TV work.

Anderson plays Shelly, a relic of her industry. In the opening scene, she is at an audition, required to list her age and height, this is an industry where beauty is priority number one. Shelly lies before bumping her age up. Her image is slowly falling apart, she realises she can’t lie about her looks anymore. She’s nervous having not auditioned in a while after a long career with her show ‘The Razzle Dazzle’. However, she still believes she lives in a dreamy and idyllic world. When asked about her music she simply says “I gave it to the maestro”. It is a blend of dire realism about the end of a career and a clinging to romantic fantasy.

Coppola cuts back to a few weeks prior. Anderson is cooking lunch for what feels like a sorority of showgirls. She’s clinging onto her past, the life she has lived for her entire career. Whilst her co-dancers refer to her as a mum, she would much rather be known as a sister, a part of the group instead of being othered. Also, there is Jamie Lee Curtis’s Annette, a retired dancer, now waiting in one of the casinos, she acts as a sort of support puppy for Shelly’s panic throughout the film, and Dave Bautista’s Eddie, the stage manager with a Kurt Russel-like haircut who informs the girls that the show is shutting down.

In many ways, Coppola’s film functions similarly to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, another film about the waning career of an artist. The subject is held with great respect, by both Anderson and the show itself. It is shot with grandiose importance, as Anderson describes with her ditzy voice and petite figure, ‘The Razzle Dazzle’ as having its roots in France, having class, an ambassador for style and grace. Yet, the times have changed, and there is a sense that the show is an old dinosaur of a bygone era, much like herself, there is now new blood, and new ideas ready to take her place.

This is all interesting stuff, however, the execution is lacking in style and substance. It is shot with this disorientating close framing, with such shallow focus the screen almost looks out of focus at times. It’s a hazy image, almost unwilling to explore the layers underneath the character of Shelly. It’s this slow-moving character piece, that moves like a trance but doesn’t have much to pierce through the periphery of its portrait – it just is.

Whilst The Last Showgirl has some great performances and some interesting ideas, at a script level it can’t really fully develop them. It is like an unseasoned meal, missing that extra je ne sais quoi to make the film shine. Like the Razzle Dazzle itself, it feels like a piece of filmmaking from the past, overly sentimental and needed fresh blood injected into it to keep the punters coming.