Directed by Gia Coppola. Written by Kate Gersten
There’s no biz like show biz they say, and the self-destructive interpretation of that phrase is writ large in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, a saccharine portrait of an aging Las Vegas dancer’s reckoning with her career and what it cost her now that it’s running out in the Nevada sand. Like most Vegas entertainment, form wins out over substance in this sour elegy.
That’s a shame, because the potential was there: Anderson is great as a never-grow-up showgirl who deluded herself about her work and its importance over everything else, and the memento mori of a long-running Vegas staple taking its curtain call is a heady metaphor for everything else in the dying American empire.
Shelly’s been a fixture of the Razzle Dazzle, a classic Vegas showgirl act, for three decades, but she’s no longer its shining centerpiece, but perhaps more the rhinestone hot glued to someone’s shoe. No matter, she loves the lights, the artistry of high leg kicks, the sensuality of dancing topless, and the long-standing history behind it, as she’ll tell anyone who dares disparage it (a long list of people that includes both family and colleagues).
Las Vegas doesn’t love the Razzle Dazzle anymore, and the house has become a morgue: the show’s days are numbered. Shelly’s soon an unemployed 57-old showgirl. What’s next?
See how great this sounds? The Last Showgirl has premise, but no sense of bravery, circling itself in a saccharine malaise about bad mothers, missed opportunities, and shots of Anderson standing around in the many parking lots of Vegas for no other reason than for Coppola to play beautiful music while her lead stands pensive like it’s some bang-average music video.
For a movie about a showgirl, we barely get any show to watch. One fairly rote dance act is all we get. For the rest, you’re treated to uneven writing, highlighted by a misplaced confrontation between mother and daughter that follows right after a tender exchange of reconciliation. Gersten’s script is lumpy like a camel’s back and Coppola’s direction has all the grace of two people clomping around in a horse costume.
Last year, Gia Coppola’s grandfather Francis released Megalopolis, a movie that took nothing but big swings, whiffed, but didn’t hesitate to immediately take another big swing. Gia would have done well to adopt some of Francis’ ambition, daring, and vision, because The Last Showgirl is a timid affair whose ambitious moments are still underpowered and the rest doused in maudlin sentimentality.
That doesn’t serve a movie about a woman’s unapologetic pursuit of her dream, and this time out, Coppola doesn’t prove herself capable of directing more than a puppet show set to great music.
Mikkel Frederiksen 