The only secure job in Las Vegas is demolition. Everyone jokes that it’s construction, but as the dust from the implosion of the Tropicana settles on the Sphere, it’s clearer than ever that Las Vegas loves to destroy its history.
So it is with the classic Las Vegas showgirl. Ever since the ladies of “Minsky Goes to Paris” dared to bare (almost) all in 1957, the sequined and ostrich-feather-plumed showgirl has been the icon of Sin City, even though the last ever true revue, Jubilee!, closed in 2016. That show inspired Le Razzle Dazzle, the show at which Shelley (Pamela Anderson) has performed since 1987. The titular showgirl of The Last Showgirl, she’s lived her dream for 37 years – and now the dream is dead as the show has been canceled to make way for a raunchy circus.
There’s no fairy tale ending to be had here, as director Gia Coppola is telling a deeply unromantic story of a dyed-in-the-satin romantic. It’s hard to watch how Shelley has failed to accept the passage of time. It’s how she treats fellow dancers Jodie (a delightfully naïve and oblivious Shipka) and Marianne (Song, battle-hardened beyond her years): They see her as a den mother, while she hangs on to being one of the girls. It’s how she can’t even remember how old her estranged daughter, Hannah (Lourd), is. It’s the way that she determinedly ignores how stage manager Eddie (Bautista at his best since Blade Runner 2049) gives her the broken-hearted puppy-dog eyes. And, most of all, it’s how her only kinship seems to be with ex-showgirl-turned-casino-floor-cocktail-waitress Annette (an unrecognizable, brilliantly bawdy Curtis). But then, at least Annette seems to realize that the world wants the younger, perkier, prettier girls who don’t need Spanx or control tops.
In its excoriation of the unfairness of how women in their 50s are treated by society, The Last Showgirl would make a perfect double bill partner to The Substance – and, much like Coralie Fargeat’s body horror masterpiece, Coppola’s story isn’t afraid to examine those same women’s complicity in that system. But in tone and style it’s much closer to the low-key observational style of the Safdie brothers or Sean Baker. That in no small part is due to the script by Kate Gersten, who adapted her unproduced stage play Body of Work after immersing herself in the closing days of Jubilee!
Coppola’s Las Vegas is not coded as an exciting destination for hard-partying twentysomethings. Instead, it’s the last dust-covered rhinestones fallen from a discarded head dress. There’s a mournfulness in the silent scenes in which Shelley fills her time when she’s not dancing or practicing. She’s not hanging around at the Bellagio or the Wynn, but down at Excalibur and Luxor and New York New York, those icons of a former Vegas that everyone knows are being eyed for the wrecking ball one day. She dances by herself under the two 50-foot illuminated showgirl signs erected, with no seeming sense of irony, in 2022. She watches the sun set on empty lots across from gas stations that will fuel journeys she will never take. And she seeks absolution from the Blue Angel statue that floats, implacably, over Fremont Street.
Even Shelley’s occasional attempts to take control of her life – as in a scene in which she faces brutal truths delivered by Jason Schwartzman as a casting director, or a failed dinner date with Eddie – are destined to fail because all that she knows is “Le Razzle Dazzle.” Anderson captures that the only place Shelley truly exists is on the stage, and now that stage is gone. It’s a performance that’s about both utter selfishness and a lack of ego, in the same way that Shelley can be literally show-stoppingly gorgeous in one scene and then look exhausted, beaten-down, and displaying every day of those 37 years on the stage.
The lack of romance is what makes The Last Showgirl so bitter and tragic. There’s no monumental burnout or redemption arc for Shelley, as either would imply a life beyond that final, glittering show, and that’s something of which she can never conceive. Las Vegas may demolish its own history, but The Last Showgirl will break your heart by showing you a woman clinging to the rubble of her life.
An earlier version of this review ran during the 2024 Austin Film Festival.
This article appears in January 10 • 2025.
