Shelly’s crisis is the closure of the Razzle Dazzle, the last Las Vegas show of its kind in which she has been a dancer since the 1980s. Based on the showgirls of the Jubilee!, the Razzle Dazzle is what others in the film term a “nudie show”, but what Shelly maintains is a tribute to the glamour and sophistication of Paris at the turn of the century. Shelly cannot reconcile her glowing image of the show, fuelled by a craving to relive her past glories on stage every night, with the reality of it as faded, faintly-embarrassing and unspectacular.
The film exhibits female friendships in a beautiful, complex way. Shelly’s best friend, Annette, played spectacularly by Jamie Lee Curtis, is an ex-dancer, now ‘cocktailer’, who gambles her life away at the casino most nights. Shelly’s life, by comparison, looks quite put together. But the two women support each other and love each other so fiercely that the scenes they share hurt one’s eyes. Shelly and Annette are joined by Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), also dancers at the Razzle Dazzle, but much younger, with a far less idealistic view of the show. To Mary-Anne and Jodie, Shelly appears a sort of motherly figure, a role in which she did not intentionally enlist, as she reminds each of the girls in two separate, equally heart-breaking scenes.
Exquisite scenes and a stellar cast make The Last Showgirl a beautifully painful film
As the film progresses, we find out just how much Shelly has given up to remain at the Razzle Dazzle, including her actual daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd). Hannah, who has grown up with another family due to Shelly’s commitment to the show, cannot understand its worth in Shelly’s eyes. Shelly strives so hard for Hannah's forgiveness, reminding her in a poignant voicemail that mothers are not saints or angels but regular women trying their best. This feeling is at the heart of the movie. All these women are doing their best, but the forces of life, and society, and – in Shelly’s case most pertinently – time, are not on their side. This kind of specific female nostalgia was the most arresting quality of the film.
Shelly clings onto the feeling of importance which the Razzle Dazzle gave her as a young woman, the kind of importance society never seems to attribute to women over thirty. This phenomenon injects women with a particular anxiety that propels them to achieve the kind of perfection it is always impossible to achieve. The Last Showgirl is a study in what happens when the illusion of it all is realised. By the time Jason Schwartzman makes a fun cameo as a no-nonsense casting director, Shelly’s vision of her world has fallen to pieces at her high-heeled feet.
Arguably, the film takes on more than it can cover in the space of 90 minutes. But perhaps the many strands of the film that didn’t quite pan out are evocative of Shelly’s view as her life spins out of control. Despite this small issue, exquisite scenes and a stellar cast make The Last Showgirl a beautifully painful film.