What do you do when the music stops, the lights go out, and no one’s waiting for your number?
If your name is Shelly (played with surprising depth by Pamela Anderson), you hold the feathered headpiece a little tighter, apply one more layer of blue glittery eyeliner, and pretend you still belong to the show – even when the show no longer exists. The Last Showgirl, Gia Coppola’s new feature, asks a simple but haunting question: what happens to the women of razzle-dazzle when the razzle fizzles out?
And no, you won’t see much razzle on screen. That’s not the point.
Instead, what we get is something far more intimate: a portrait of performers behind the sparkle. A documentary-style peek – shot on film – into the fading glamour of a dying Vegas subculture. And a quiet, layered meditation on aging, bad decisions, motherhood, missed dreams, and the stubborn persistence of hope.
It’s also, unmistakably, a Coppola-girl movie. You can smell the Coppola DNA from the opening credits. Literally pink. Pink fonts, pink hues, pink emotional undertones. Warm reds melt into velvety shadows; soft focus shots blur at the edges like old postcards or memories we’d rather not face. Like a cousin to Sofia’s Somewhere or Priscilla, but with more fringe and fewer castles. Coppola has a gift for capturing emotional inertia – those moments when life seems paused, but something quietly monumental is shifting underneath.
Here, that shift begins with an ending.
The fictional Vegas show Razzle Dazzle closes after a 30-year run, and its longtime lead, Shelly, is left stranded in a world that no longer wants what she has to offer – if she had anything to offer, she slowly starts to question. Around her, the small ecosystem of showgirls – current, former, forgotten – begins to unravel.
Source: Stir
There’s Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), a 20-year-old runaway with crazy dreams and nowhere else to go. Anna (Jamie Lee Curtis), the oldest of them all, who’s been demoted from stage to casino waitress, dragging trays and old wounds across the floor. Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s soft-hearted stage manager and Shelly’s ex, who still knows how to press her buttons. And then, like a ghost from a parallel universe, Hannah – the daughter Shelly gave up for this life – suddenly reappears.
Except, it turns out, she’s not a ghost. She’s an aspiring photographer – aka a “fellow artist”.
Let’s get this out of the way: Pamela Anderson shows real range here. Her performance here isn’t loud or desperate or even particularly polished – it’s lived-in, wounded, youthful and strangely tender. She’s clearly drawing from a well of personal experience (“I’m 57 and I’m beautiful”), and Coppola knows exactly how to frame her. One long take of her watching and practicing an old dance routine or trying not to cry in a parking lot says more than a monologue ever could.
The story behind her casting is already becoming legend. Anderson’s former agent reportedly turned down the script within the hour. (Tragic.) But Coppola, thankfully, was persistent. She reached out to Brandon Thomas Lee (Anderson’s son, also an executive producer), pitched the project over dinner, and within days Anderson had read the script, fired the agent, and said yes. One for the girls.
It was the right call. This is Anderson’s most honest and grounded work to date. She doesn’t play Shelly like a washed-up diva – she plays her like a woman who realizes she gave up everything for something that didn’t quite give back.
And Jamie Lee Curtis? She steals the damn show.
In one scene, she is on a casino table and dances to Total Eclipse of the Heart. It’s tragic, absurd, and beautiful all at once. A living, breathing moment of raw vulnerability. Through her, we glimpse a past we’ll never fully know: the youthful Anna arriving in Vegas full of promise, and the bitter, hilarious, broke woman she’s become.
Shot in just 18 days, The Last Showgirl doesn’t dazzle in the way most Vegas-set films do. There are no casino heists, no Cirque du Soleil cameos, no neon-soaked chases down the Strip. Instead, we linger in modest homes, dressing rooms, and parking lots. Moments between routines. Silences after applause. The harshness that strikes women – way more powerfully than in last year’s body horror-hit The Substance.
The showgirls aren’t performing for us anymore – they’re just trying to survive. Some have transitioned to other jobs (waiting tables, mostly). Some are stuck in limbo. All of them are confronting a reality they weren’t prepared for: the end of something that once defined them.
And yet, there’s so much beauty in the way Coppola captures them. Through documentary-style cinematography, blurred edges, and soft-focus closeups, we see every eyelash, every fake diamond, every tear threatening to mess up that mascara. These visual textures match the psychological ones: faded, warm, layered, nostalgic.
At its core, The Last Showgirl is about identity. It meditates on the brutal honesty required to know where your talent lies – and the heartbreak that follows when a dream doesn’t quite materialize. It asks: When is it okay to let go? What do we owe to our passion, and what does it owe us?
It’s not a perfect film. The ending feels a little too tidy, and some of the character arcs – especially the younger girls – feel like they had more left to say. One can’t help but wish the film lingered a little longer in certain relationships or took more narrative risks. But what it lacks in boldness, it makes up for in feeling.
It’s a loving, bittersweet homage to an era on its way out. A quiet elegy for glitter and feathers and 5-inch heels. And for once, the women at the center aren’t used as symbols or punchlines – they’re simply allowed to be human.
If this is Gia Coppola’s comeback (after the uneven Mainstream), it’s a strong one. And for Pamela Anderson, it might just be a rebirth.
Because sometimes, the real show begins when the curtain falls.
You can catch The Last Showgirl on Apple TV or rent it on Zee5 and Amazon Video.
~ by Dora Endre ~
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