The Last Showgirl (2024)
Directed by Gia Coppola
When the glittering Las Vegas revue she has headlined for decades announces it will soon close, a glamorous showgirl must reconcile with the decisions she’s made and the community she has built as she plans her next act.
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39 films that influenced The Last Showgirl
What critics say influenced The Last Showgirl
Similar to Demi Moore in The Substance, The Last Showgirl is another case of casting a ‘90s sex symbol that the system pushed aside acting in a project that calls it out for its ageist norms.
In its excoriation of the utter unfairness of how women in their fifties are treated by society, The Last Showgirl would seem to be a perfect double-bill partner The Substance…
In its excoriation of the unfairness of how women in their 50s are treated by society, The Last Showgirl would make a perfect double bill partner to The Substance…
Like the naturalistic flipside to this year’s The Substance, The Last Showgirl follows a woman in late middle age who is cast out of her glamour profession for the crime of aging; even more acutely than The Substance’s Demi Moore, Anderson, the wet-dream fantasy of the pneumatic ’90s, is a walking ledger of sexual currency.
It’s hard not to draw comparisons to Demi Moore’s performance in The Substance, as both films overlap in themes this year.
From The Substance to Maria to The Last Showgirl.
The Last Showgirl is a thoughtful and deft character study which charts similar terrain to Aronofsky's 2008's The Wrestler.
However, it inevitably draws comparisons to “The Wrestler,”…
…it doesn’t have the bruised brilliance of The Wrestler, for example…
The analog to The Last Showgirl and this Anderson performance is Mickey Rourke’s career-redefining performance in The Wrestler, which similarly encouraged the viewer to grapple (no pun intended) with an actor’s offscreen baggage and tabloid infamy, serving as an emotional shorthand for the character.
It’s reminiscent of Mickey Rourke’s turn in The Wrestler (2010), in stripping back a larger-than-life performer to its essence.
…while also existing in the same universe as The Iron Claw and The Wrestler…
…a film that was almost certainly designed to be Anderson’s equivalent of The Whale…
…the kind of show where rhinestones and crystal beads are supposed to signify class, like the “Goddess” revue in Verhoeven’s Showgirls.
But where a fun trainwreck like the campy Showgirls at least provides a comic backdrop against what these shows probably aren’t like, The Last Showgirl bathes in unearned melancholy…
This before it devolved into the type of cheap and tawdry place that attracts the likes of Nomi Malone in Showgirls.
Whatever shade you want to throw at Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven knew that nothing explores a dancer character better than seeing them dance.
“The Last Showgirl” isn’t a disaster, like “Showgirls,” sort of its reverse, was.
…a soulful, sensitive alternative to gaudy screen depictions of similar milieus, like Showgirls and Burlesque…
Director
Sean Baker
Critics invoke Baker by name, and compare The Last Showgirl to 3 of Baker’s films.
Visuals
On Baker, rather than any one film
…much closer to the low-key observational style of the Safdie brothers or Sean Baker…
…the low-key observational style of the Safdie brothers or Sean Baker…
The Last Showgirl does something similar to Anora (2024), which is to humanise the figures on stage.
…neither does this titillation-adjacent tale fall into the traps of passive, patronizing attitudes that befell the heavily feted Anora.
It’s almost impossible not to draw comparisons to Sean Baker’s Anora in this regard.
“The Florida Project,”…
…channelling elements of his films’ gritty, sun-drenched realism, even sporting a similar colour palette to The Florida Project…
“Red Rocket,”…
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Like Imitation of Life, The Last Showgirl treats high-gloss femininity as a form of false consciousness, an ideal imposed upon women that ends up alienating them from each other, particularly mothers from their daughters.
On Malick, rather than any one film
I dislike long takes of wandering characters looking forlorn and wistful (thank Terrence Malick for that)…
…characters wander about the Las Vegas Strip like they’re extras in a Terrence Malick movie…
Director
Sofia Coppola
Critics invoke Coppola by name, and compare The Last Showgirl to 3 of Coppola’s films.
Visuals
On Coppola, rather than any one film
But while Sofia Coppola tends to trap her characters in obsessively composed domestic cages, Gia keeps Shelly free-roving but conspicuously separate from the city she loves.
Gia Coppola tells this story in a way strongly reminiscent of her aunt Sofia Coppola…
…there is more than a touch of Coppola’s aunt Sophia’s Priscilla…
…can’t compare to the piercing emotional intimacy of, say, The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation or Priscilla…
But the new film — written by Kate Gersten, a Coppola clan member by marriage — can’t compare to the piercing emotional intimacy of, say, The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation or Priscilla, even if the raw character study at its center steadily builds poignancy.
But the new film — written by Kate Gersten, a Coppola clan member by marriage — can’t compare to the piercing emotional intimacy of, say, The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation or Priscilla, even if the raw character study at its center steadily builds poignancy.
…the affecting and comprehensive Pam (which itself felt like a tonic to the ill-advised, sensationalist miniseries Pam & Tommy)…
Hulu’s miniseries Pam & Tommy helped with this, as it was made not only without her blessing but against her protests.
Pamela Anderson might have been publicly opposed to the making of Pam & Tommy, Hulu’s glossy retelling of the theft of a private videotape from her home…
Hot on the heels of Hulu’s drama, Pam & Tommy…
After 2022's Pam & Tommy reappraised Pamela Anderson as a sympathetic hero…
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…while The Red Shoes is all about a woman put to the test when it comes to choosing between her art (also ballet) or romantic love. The latter is especially resonant to Shelly, who has always chosen her art form over relationships…
Historians can point to the brief spate of mature actress thrillers from the early 1960s (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE and its ilk) as an inspiration for that film.