Creativity and time have a funny relationship. When you allow yourself to stand on the fertile ground of artistic progress, you become wrapped in a cocoon of euphoria — whether painting a canvas, singing, or dancing. For those moments, you are weightless and fulfilling a purpose others may not understand. But you don’t make art for the simple meaning of perception; you do it for love only you can describe. Over time, things begin to poke holes in that space — responsibility, capitalism, societal expectations, and contempt for art eat away youthful exuberance. Reality then seeps into your utopia, and the question is, “Was this all worth it?”
In Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl,” Shelly Gardner (Pamela Anderson) has stayed inside the romanticized view of the life she’s always wanted in Las Vegas. For thirty years, she’s been a lead showgirl in “Le Razzle Dazzle,” the last show on the strip. In its heyday, there were international tours, the performers were treated like movie stars, and Shelly was right at the forefront of it all. “Le Razzle Dazzle” is not just a cabaret show with nudity and bedazzled costumes. To Shelly, it’s a classic Sin City institution mixing dance with a sense of regality. Looking at things from the outside, how could you blame her? In a place known for the high rollers, fast movers, and bright lights, Shelly was queen on the stage in a way where it mattered to her the most.
Sometimes, we don’t get to say when the fairy tale ride ends or if it will be a soft landing. Coppola’s film hones in on what we do when the end comes for something we aren’t necessarily ready to part with. Shelly and her friends/co-workers Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) frantically get their costumes right in their dressing room before taking the stage before the night’s show. It might be a bit cumbersome, given how the show’s flow is of another forego era.
Nevertheless, you have to admire the human touch of it all in a city that boasts the likes of U2 playing at the multi-billion dollar Sphere. Shelly’s daily routine in how she goes about her life is an exact mirror image of what makes “Le Razzle Dazzle.” She carries a flip phone, uses a rotary phone at home, watches old dancing movies on a projector instead of a television, and dances to Pat Benatar during an audition. Anderson speaks with a drawl through Shelly akin to a 1950s starlet. With Shelly’s costume, wings need to be sewn if even the slightest tear occurs (which would be docked directly from her paycheck). There’s comfort in a routine about to be torn apart.
Pamela Anderson in ‘The Last Showgirl‘ / Photo Credit: Roadside Attractions
The revue producer, Eddie (Dave Bautista), lets everyone know “Le Razzle Dazzle” will shut down in a couple of weeks. Chalk it to dwindling ticket sales or the casino’s management wanting to go another way; the institution will soon be removed. Coppola’s film hones in on the final shows and how one prepares to meet an uncertain future. Kate Gersten’s writing is at its strongest when it keeps Shelly at the center of all the themes “The Last Showgirl” is trying to tackle simultaneously. Shelly is in disbelief because this is all she’s known, seemingly giving up what a “normal life” could be in pursuit of a neverending pot of gold. In an overlap of themes from 2024’s “The Substance,” showbiz uses women for their youth and discards them as soon as the slightest wrinkle tends to show. Jodie and Mary-Anne will probably be able to pick up another gig, but where does that leave Shelly? The film is a chronicle of her desperately clinging to those last shows, as her life depends on it (it does), and dipping her toe in a world where she shunned for the promise of a dream.
As it turns out, Shelly has an estranged daughter named Hannah (Billie Lourd) with whom she has a fraught relationship. In the time we spend with them together, there’s a genuine overture from Shelly to try to be the mother Hannah so desperately wanted. The connection works on a level of the different sides of artistry other than a parent and child. Hannah is in college studying photography and is surrounded by people who tell her to drop her career for something that makes substantial income. Shelly can’t fathom ever doing so because her life is an amalgamation of what it means to choose creative pursuits over conventionalness. That comes at a cost. While Hannah’s character doesn’t get to evolve in the way Shelly does, a particular scene in a conversation where Shelly happily chooses a solitary existence is where Lourd shows disdain through facial expressions.
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The younger characters in “The Last Showgirl” are here to serve as further inferences of all the internal struggles that Shelly is going through. Although, there are points within the narrative where their stories could have been expounded upon to make the whole stronger. Jodie is 19, seeking a motherly figure Shelly can’t be. Mary-Anne doesn’t have the same starry-eyed reverence Shelly has for “Le Razzle Dazzle.” It echoes what the world thinks about the show in general — probably through judgmental eyes. In fact, they often argue because of the differenting option. The show it’s not just a job to Shelly, it’s the foundation she’s built her life upon. By the middle of the film, we know the reasons why Shelly found herself personified in Vegas and what always drew her back despite other life paths. “The Last Showgirl” hints the other women might have stories of their own, but the main character’s gravitation pull is too great for them to have a say.
Coppola and Gersten synergize through kinship with Shelly and her friend Anette (Jamie Lee Curtis). Where Shelly is more soft-spoken, Anette is a firecracker still trying to prove she has something to offer the world. In quitting the show six years ago, Anette works as a cocktail server in a Las Vegas casino and can’t even fathom retiring. The essence of Vegas is all these friends know; they can’t picture a time when they weren’t included in its DNA. It’s not exactly like they have pensions.
Intertwined within the main scenes are collections of images of these characters roaming around the Las Vegas strip. Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw films it in a way that feels uniquely personal and is tight to the way where the world outside the characters doesn’t matter. Las Vegas is nosy and bustling with people trying to get to the next vice, but the characters of “The Last Showgirl” bask in the lights and architecture of the city as a way to keep it alive in history forever.
The crowning jewel of the film is Anderson’s performance, which shares an almost identical story to her “Showgirl” counterpart. It’s not as if Shelly is a trace of Anderson’s life altogether, but the actress’s deep resonance within this character shines through. Throughout her career, Anderson was typecasted and profoundly taken for granted. In “The Last Showgirl,” it’s as if she’s using Shelly as a conduit to reclaim the process of what dedication to artfulness looks like to her. Even if the stress of the end gets to Shelly and has an eventual breakdown, she stays locked into a standard that puts skill over trends. Isn’t that something to be proud of, at least?
