52 Films by Women Vol 9. 4. The Last Showgirl (Director: Gia Coppola)

Pictured: Channelling her inner Gena Rowlands, Shelly (Pamela Anderson) worries about the future in director Gia Coppola's film, 'The Last Showgirl', written by Kate Gersten. Still courtesy of Roadside Attractions (US) / Picturehouse Entertainment (UK)

I am generally suspicious of films and television series that begin with the words ‘The Last’. For every The Last of the Mohicans, there is The Last Boy Scout, The Last Black Man in San Francisco and The Last of Us. While we live in a time of absolutes – it won’t be long before there is a film entitled The Last Civil Servant, describing the US Department of Government Efficiency’s current purges of US administrative departments – generally, beliefs, races, pastimes, professions survive in one form or another. If children are no long cleaning chimneys in London, they are certainly picking through toxic trash in South America.

The latest film destined for the middle of an alphabetized DVD shelf is The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola, the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, who helmed three Godfather films, Apocalypse Now and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Gia Coppola’s film, written by Kate Gersten, describes the end of a certain kind of entertainment in which women dress up in exotic costumes usually featuring feathers and spangles, dance, sing or lip-synch, on a stage where their sexy but not smutty act was once greeted with enthusiastic applause. These days, in Las Vegas where the film is set, very few people want to see this kind of show, entitled here ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’. The film’s titular protagonist, Shelly Gardner (Pamela Anderson) describes the revue as cultural. It’s in the French tradition of the Folies Bergère – so-called can-can girls in long lines high-kicking in unison, offering male audiences a thrill.

The show itself is a backstage marvel of quick change as one routine is followed by another. There is an evocative shot of one group of women’s legs racing downstairs whilst another set of legs race upstairs. Shelly was once the star, but aged 57 – revealed only during one humiliating scene – she is more like a den mother. This being a low budget film – or, if you prefer, for dramatic economy - Shelly hosts only a representative sample of her co-performers in her apartment, that is, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and former showgirl turned cocktail waitress, Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), the latter an alcoholic with money problems.

The film begins with a flash-forward to Shelly’s audition, lying about her age, describing her talent in limited terms, endeavouring to charm those around her, ‘I gave my music to the maestro’. Anderson’s delivery of the word ‘maestro’ shivers with the possibility of sarcasm. Can that word truly be applied to someone who places a CD into a player and presses a button? Shelly’s intention is to both to flatter and engender flattery – behaviour breeds behaviour. Will she wow the director? We have our doubts.

Pictured: Ready for the next routine, Shelly (Pamela Anderson) in a scene from the Las Vegas-set drama, 'The Last Showgirl', written by Kate Gersten and directed by Gia Coppola. Still courtesy of Roadside Attractions (US) / Picturehouse Entertainment (UK)

Anderson became famous through the long-running television series, Baywatch, in which she played one of a team of lifeguards cast for their photogenic qualities. She has also posed in magazines and appeared in straight to video films. She achieved notoriety when a recording of her and her then-husband Tommy Lee pleasuring one another became public. The exposure didn’t end her career, but she wasn’t going to be cast in any Disney movies anytime soon. The Last Showgirl represents her first leading role in a film since Barb Wire in 1996 and utilises her iconic status as a woman who fought to retain her glamour rather than transition. Curtis, by contrast, doesn’t hide her age.

The show’s production manager, Eddie (Dave Bautista) is an unexpected late arrival for Shelly’s meal, itself prepared for an audience member who asked for a date with Shelly, but then never showed up. (‘It’s a Las Vegas story to say I dated a showgirl,’ observes one of the group.) Eddie isn’t exactly welcome, though one of the performers asks Shelly why she never hooked up with him. He bears bad news. Reduced to only a few shows a week, ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’ will finally close in thirty days-time. The film then counts down to Shelly’s final performance.

Coppola and Gersten don’t manufacture drama. Rather, they focus on the tensions and alternatives to a life on the ‘Razzle Dazzle’ stage. First, there is Shelly’s strained relationship with her daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), who lives in Tucson, having been raised by another couple. Hannah grew up never knowing who her father was. She was adopted in some unspecified way after Shelly failed to cope. Shelly calls her. ‘You could come see the show,’ she suggests, as if she were performing in a high-end production. It is no such thing. When Shelly damages one of her stage wings on a door handle ‘which didn’t used to be there’, she is made to pay for their repair.

The choreographer-manager of ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’ is referred to but never seen, an effective narrative choice as it helps us to see the world through Shelly’s excessively lashed eyes. Hannah visits her birth mother, but writer and director stretch her subplot over a number of scenes. I couldn’t believe that Hannah would make the 824-mile round trip between Tucson and Las Vegas several times for what, at heart, is one scene. Hannah sees her mother’s show. How could she think that she would like it? Why would Shelly devote her life to it instead of raising her child? To both questions, Shelly has no answer. I wanted Coppola and Gersten to give Hannah a problem or two of her own, to give her a reason to ask her mother for help. She is there just to pile on the pathos, to remind us of Shelly’s empty sacrifice.

Annette suggests that Shelly could become a waitress in a casino. Not that Annette always gets shift work. In one scene, she and a colleague are sent home early. Annette is on a self-destructive path. We discover that she is homeless, living out of her car. In one scene, whether required by her job or just to return her glory days, Annette gets up onto a table and starts dancing to Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’. Coppola holds her camera on Curtis for a long time but then cuts to Shelly, to underline the self-absorption of both characters. Delusion is an integral part of surviving Las Vegas.

Electing only to feature two male characters in her ensemble, Coppola has chosen not to make a film about female victimhood. Rather she shows women directing their own lives. Jodie demonstrates a routine that she performed at an audition, simulating a sexual act with a chair. ‘I could never appear in that kind of show,’ says Shelly. Their choices are not without cost. Jodie comes to Shelly late at night, asking for help. Her mother has refused to speak to her. Shelly, in her own form of distress, closes the door on her. Later, Shelly needs help getting ready. Her colleagues refuse. Shelly proves that she can do it by herself but then tears her wing again.

We learn also that Shelly and Eddie once had a relationship. Shelly reflects how easy it is for Eddie to find another job, whereas for her it is much harder. Their relationship is unequal. However, Shelly doesn’t try to rekindle it.  Then there is the audition itself, which offers its own bucket of pathos.

Only in the finale of the film do we see Shelly on stage, in full display, a monument of sorts to self-care and a reminder of who Anderson is. On the one hand, Coppola pays tribute to Anderson’s longevity. On the other, she asks, ‘what do women have to do to continue to be seen?’ The film also describes the peril of living without a social safety net for the sake of one’s art. While Shelly’s future is uncertain, the answer is, keep smiling. 

Reviewed at Curzon Westgate, Canterbury, Kent, Wednesday 5^th March 2025, 17:40 screening