Movie Number 12 of 2024
The Movie: The Last Showgirl
The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens
Runtime: 89 minutes
Stars: 4
I went to this partly out of curiosity and partly to get away from the heat. Going to the cinema on hot days is something I do often. The film is also the darling of the film festivals, being nominated all over the place, including the Screen Actors Guild and BAFTA awards. Of course I'm going to be curious.
It also brings at 57-year-old Pamela Anderson back to the big screen. More on her later.
What I found was a hidden gem of a film.
The Last Showgirl looks at the other side of Las Vegas. The bits you see in the daytime, when the lights are no longer shining, and the audiences and car parks are empty, and the bins are waiting for the day crew to come in and empty them. We meet Shelly (Anderson), an aging show girl in the Le Razzle Dazzle revue, preparing for another show. She's obviously the oldest in troupe, and her fellow dancers Jodie (Keirnan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) see her as the den mother of the troupe. Being a show girl is all she knows.
You get to see other parts of Shelly's life. Her friend Annette (Jamie Leigh Curtis) has retired from being a showgirl and is now a drinks waitress at one of the hotels. Shelly also has a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) who holds a number of resentments about her upbringing. And then there's her relationship with Eddie (Dave Bautista) the show's producer. The two have known each other for decades.
Shelly has led this hand to mouth existence on the Las Vegas strip for thirty years, and now, early in the film, she is told the show, after 30 years, is closing, and she is sent into a tailspin.
Gia Coppola's film is a melancholic look at what can go on in Vegas, where youth is celebrated and the older workers have to make do any way they can. Jamie Leigh Curtis's Annette is a poignant look at aging in a youth culture. Kate Gersten's screenplay is bang on.
For me, I'm in two minds about the camerawork on the film, which has that wobbly hand-held effect, particularly as the girls are running from the dressing room to the stage. Although it provides the film with a claustrophobic feel, it only heightens the precariousness of the character's lives.
This is Pamela Anderson's film. She is fantastic as the slightly delusional, melancholic dancer, an anachronism of her own making. At the end of the film, you leave wondering just what will happen to her. You want to know this - and you want to wish her well, even though you wonder at her resilience.
The people of Las Vegas, the show girls, performers, the casino pit crews, the escorts, the cocktail waitresses - they have to be resilient. This is the films message.
The Last Showgirl is on limited release around the cinemas. It will be on streaming soon. It's definitely worth a look.
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