‘The Last Showgirl’ review: A heartbreaking look at dreamers

Many may look at Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl as a tale of desperation. But to me, the Pamela Anderson film is the dark side of being a dreamer.

Shelly (Anderson) is a dancer at one of the last shows that honors the art of being a showgirl in Las Vegas. While her younger counterparts, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Marianne (Brenda Song), don’t take it seriously, Shelly believes in what they are doing. The juxtaposition between Shelly’s love of what she does in comparison to Jodie and Marianne just doing it for the money is a driving force of the piece as a whole.

Shelly and Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) are two women who never let go of their Las Vegas dreams. Both Marianne and Jodie are fresh in them and already numb to what the dancing scene in Vegas can do to a performer. But seeing Shelly’s past come to light through her broken relationship with her daughter (Billie Lourd) paints a dark picture in contrast to the vibrant costumes that she wears in her daily life at work.

Coppola’s use of color highlights the fake florescent feel of Vegas while still bringing you in and tricking you into believing it can be something more. Anderson makes Shelly less desperate and more of a compassionate character. You feel for her and the life she’s living but you also see how many of her problems are her own doing.

A feathery dark world

So many have commented on Anderson’s lack of make-up in this film. Personally, I feel like her lack of make-up is less about seeing Anderson in a new light and more about seeing how Shelly is both in her real life and when she’s on stage. Performing, she has bright eyeshadow and all the makings of a Vegas showgirl but at home, she looks like a woman who doesn’t have much. It paints a vivid picture of the two lives she’s living.

Coppola’s soft lighting and pastel color palette invites you in but it is Shelly’s story that is meant to tug at your heart. She is, at her core, a woman who had a dream. Instead of letting it go, she stuck with it until it was the only thing she had left. That is the heartbreaking reality of The Last Showgirl.

Even when Annette shows us her job as a waiter and performer, we see these two women who are still trying to chase that high. There is nothing like being on stage and both Shelly and Annette are not willing to let it go. Jodie and Marianne are in this for a job and we don’t see them as two women who particularly love it but that is contrasted so beautifully with Shelly’s devotion to it.

The Last Showgirl is more than “that movie where Pamela Anderson doesn’t wear make-up.” Anderson’s performance alone shows us that. But The Last Showgirl is, in itself, a heartbreaking one. It is a story of a woman unwilling to give up what she loves and it is oddly beautiful in that.