Drama
The Last Showgirl (15)
Review: On and off screen, two stories of triumph against adversity resonate loudly in Hollywood: the underdog valiantly clawing their way to the top and the long-forgotten veteran staging an improbable comeback against success-hungry ingenues. The Last Showgirl warmly embraces both narratives in an unabashed love letter to an old-fashioned style of entertainment and the trailblazing women, whose artful on-stage nudity may have been dismissed as mere titillation but paved the way for generations of convention-challenging divas including burlesque performer Dita Von Teese.
Director Gia Coppola shoots handheld on grainy 16mm film to reflect the nearly faded glitz and glamour of her embattled lead character played with career-resuscitating gusto by Pamela Anderson. Her impassioned embodiment of a stalwart of the Nevada strip, whose identity is superglued to her alluring on-stage alter ego, dovetails neatly with Anderson’s proud personal history as an actress, model and Playboy cover star.
Screenwriter Kate Gersten arms her cast with zinging one-liners such as a backstage spat between Anderson’s mother hen and a younger performer she has taken under her wing: “Just what I need, a lesson in character from a 19-year-old.” More pithy introspection surfaces when the title character casually dismisses the notion of her being a Rockette in New York: “Nah, I found all that kicking very redundant”. Jamie Lee Curtis delivers scintillating support as a ballsy confidante, improvising a hypnotic dance solo on a casino table to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart, but other cast contend with characters that are nearly as threadbare as the stage costumes that fray and tear, unfairly resulting in docked pay.
For decades, 50-something showgirl Shelly Gardner (Anderson) has been the radiant face plastered on advertising for Le Razzle Dazzle, the last remaining French-style revue on the Las Vegas strip. Out of the blue, stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) announces that the show’s producers have taken the decision to close Le Razzle Dazzle because of dwindling audiences. The final performance will be in two weeks.
The jolting reality that the party is almost over for Shelly forces the veteran starlet to contemplate auditioning for the first time in decades against co-stars Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and teenager Jodie (Kiernan Shipka). Shelly also feels compelled to bridge an emotional divide to her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who always felt second best to her mother’s stage ambitions.
The Last Showgirl is a dazzling showcase for Anderson and Curtis but they are better than the wistful, meandering film around them. At a lithe 88 minutes, Coppola’s film still feels slightly bloated and the strained mother-daughter storyline ladles sugary sweetness to provide at least some dramatic resolution among the feathers and frou-frou.
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