The Last Showgirl (2025)

The figure of Paul Verhoeven looms large over Gia Coppola's third feature. The strange thing is that no-one seems to be mentioning Verhoeven in the same breath as The Last Showgirl, which is truly baffling.

Verhoeven's Showgirls (1995) was widely considered a complete flop on its release, garnering a whole host of critical backlash as well as several Razzies to boot. The problem with all of this, is that Showgirls is a masterpiece; a vicious and satirical take-down of the Las Vegas showgirl scene, depicting the (many) trials and tribulations of a young woman who arrives in Vegas ready to achieve her dream of starring in one the City's spectaculars.

Coppola's The Last Showgirl aims for the other end of the candle. Pamela Anderson has been on the strip for over thirty years, sacrificing an early relationship with her daughter in a bid to make it big in Vegas and provide money- in her mind doing the best she can. The show is coming to an abrupt end after decades on the scene, and Anderson's Shelley has been with it from the very beginning, forcing her to suddenly rethink her future. She's aided in her struggles by her friend and former showgirl Annette (a fabulous Jamie Lee Curtis) and Dave Bautista's Eddie, stage manager on the show with whom Shelley evidently has some sort of history.

Anderson is astonishing, it's a real shame she didn't get more awards attention; the way in which she captures the near desperation and denial of an aging star (at an audition she claims to be 36, then 42 before finally admitting to 57) is at times haunting in its plausibility. Her love of her daughter Hannah is obvious, yet she seems to be unable to admit to wrongdoing on her part in the bringing up of her child- she's totally absorbed into the vortex of Vegas by this point.

Hannah's sudden appearance at Shelley's door does seem veritable in terms of timing, and one of The Last Showgirl's stumbling blocks is its run time. Clocking in at well under two hours, the film simply isn't fleshed out enough to give us a complete back story of the players, and apart from Shelley and Annette, others are underdeveloped. The film ends on a note of bafflement in its resolution, and some unpacking of what might follow the film's conclusion would have been welcome in its authenticity to the story.

Comparisons can inevitably drawn with Coralie Fargeat's The Substance- a superior film although perhaps a direct juxtaposition of these two films is unfair. Both deal with the subject of aging in very different ways: The Last Showgirl is a routinely delicate portrayal of a star in decline, whereas The Substance is a more satirical and sexualised tale of a star on the wane- not the progressive feminist tale that many have claimed (or rather assumed), rather a homage to the body horror films of the eighties.

Coppla's storytelling is ultimately insubstantial to hang such a slight feature film from, but Anderson's performance elevates The Last Showgirl above a simple footnote. Showgirls this is not, but this late career flourish by Anderson means that the film not only justifies its existence, it provides you with an engaging- if frail- hundred or so minutes in Vegas. 7.1/10