To fill your eyes, but to better open your eyes. Ravaging, superlative and unstoppably relevant beneath its kitschy exterior: it’s Showgirl, a show to see at the Théâtre de la Bastille, in Paris, where, at the time of the second #metoo wave of French cinema, it has everything, not only to cause a sensation, but also to give food for thought. We owe this stage object, constantly on the verge of the improbable, to Marlène Saldana, an actress-performer-dancer-singer of total singularity, and to her accomplice Jonathan Drillet.
The idea here was to adapt for the stage Showgirls (in the plural, when the title of the show is in the singular, which is important), the film first cursed, then become cult over the years, by Paul Verhoeven, released in 1995. Executed by critics and shunned by the public upon its release, Showgirls was gradually rehabilitated as questions of gender, feminism and “sexploitation” took center stage in the debate. In 2014, in the monograph It Doesn’t Suck. Showgirls (“It’s not shit. Showgirls”, Pop Classics, untranslated), critic Adam Nayman wrote that it was“a devastating film. (…) If we take it as a commentary on the sadistic and salacious dimension of show business, it is the work of a master.”
On the stage dominated by an enormous phallus made of golden and sparkling pearls, Marlène Saldana’s aim is not to literally trace the story of Nomi Malone, a dancer who came to try her luck in the undressed and suggestive shows of Las Vegas, and narrowly escaping the abyss of this contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah. Rather to play with it, in the sense of giving play, squeaking.
Actress collateral victims
Moreover, it is not only the heroine of the film that she summons here, but also the actress who played her, Elizabeth Berkley, who was the collateral and main victim of the poor reception of Showgirls, while she is simply magnificent there. But still other figures of actresses: Maria Schneider, and what Marlon Brando and Bernardo Bertolucci imposed on her in Last Tango in Paris (1972), or Romy Schneider, playing herself, in The important thing is to love (1975), by Andrzej Zulawski, an actress forced, to survive, to act in a pornographic film.
Showgirl, by multiplying the mise en abyme, by fitting together its Russian dolls one after the other, therefore offers itself as a metaphor for the condition of an actress, which is also what Verhoeven suggested in the last shot of his film, which showed its heroine on her way to Hollywood. This is all the more sensitive as Marlène Saldana plays all the roles – except that of the male confidant, played by Jonathan Drillet. And it’s an understatement to say that she throws her body into battle, this body which does not correspond to the standards imposed by the show business industry, and which she accepts wonderfully.
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