Shelley is as beautiful as ever, but when we first see her auditioning for a new job, the camera looks up to capture her sagging jawline. Onstage, Shelley is covered in sequins, feathers, and copious amounts of makeup, but offstage, bare-faced, she’s like anyone else in the grocery store. From start to finish, Anderson, with her baby-doll voice, expertly conveys the girlish dream that Shelley never lets go. Annette, with her shaggy hair, bad spray tan, and matte lipstick, looks like a caricature of a tough woman. Curtis plays her as a woman who is absolutely sure of who she is.
With a sophisticated use of perspective, the film shows us the Las Vegas that Shelley romanticized, but still glittering. Autumn Durald Arcapaugh’s cinematography is soft and beautiful; there’s no glare from the neon-lit Strip. We see Shelley in brightly lit dressing rooms and running onto the stage with other ornately costumed showgirls. But we see, more clearly than Shelley, that their rhinestone headdresses and feathers belong to a show that, as one young dancer puts it, has become “a dinosaur.”
Sharply drawn characters, including two young showgirls, help reveal just how dreamy and unrealistic Shelley is. Kiernan Shipka plays 19-year-old Jodie, who thinks dancing is just a game. Brenda Song plays the already headstrong Marianne, who tells her, “It’s a job, and we get paid in American dollars.” Shelley, wide-eyed, insists that their show, called Le Razzle Dazzle, is important, with a tradition that dates back to the Lido cabaret in Paris. “Nobody cares,” Marianne tells Shelley. Razzle Dazzle is replaced by a sexy circus, and one comic scene features strippers who also spin plates.
Billie Lourd is tough and moving as Hannah, Shelley’s antagonistic college-aged daughter, who Shelley ignored as a child and hasn’t seen for a year. Hannah is invited to see Shelley’s revue, and backstage calls it a “stupid nudity show” and “boring trash.” Lourd makes it clear that Hannah is hurt, not spiteful.
