Leaving Las Vegas begins as a character study of Nicolas Cage’s alcoholic Ben as he drinks himself to death in Las Vegas, but slowly shifts to revolve around the descent of his romantic interest Sera, a prostitute who takes him in after leaving her abusive pimp. At face value, there is nothing wrong with a story of mutual healing, a man who needs somebody and a woman who needs a better man. However, the film seems to relish in Sera’s misfortune just as much as it wallows in Ben’s self-destruction, portraying the relationship as Sera exploiting and abandoning Ben, despite their actions telling a much different story: Ben is an emotionally manipulative parasite, and Sera is a victim of his wiles, rather than the other way around.
Sera represents a common caricature in male-created romance cinema, one of a nurturing but promiscuous woman. She is not a character, but rather a bitter man’s projection of idealized femininity: she (the sexual being) leaves behind her autonomy, especially as it relates to sex, in pursuit of a position of servitude to him (the bitter writer). As he sees it, he is a victim of circumstance, and she of a whorish desire for non-monogamy that is decidedly unladylike. In being with him, she is saved from her volatile whorishness, and he is saved from his cruel circumstances. She cleans up his messes, thereby creating a stability for them both. Of course, in real life, a relationship like this would be one-sided and without benefit for the woman, but the caricature of a man’s idealized femininity does not care. She is content in the imbalanced relationship, and considers their positions in each others lives to be, for lack of a better phrase, separate but equal. This caricature has been called, in online criticism, “the Motherly Prostitute,” for her otherworldly abilities of emotional assistance through both maternal wisdom and the sexual prowess she gained from her previous life of lasciviousness.
As the Motherly Prostitute isn’t given much of a personality outside of her bond with her male counterpart, Elisabeth Shue’s somewhat flat performance as Sera cannot be attributed to poor creative choices or general thespian inability on her part. On the contrary, she does as best as could be expected of any actor in her position, making Sera a believable, if uncomplicated, person. Unfortunately, due to a morally twisted screenplay, her effort is relegated to uselessness and what little exists of her character’s arc is trodden by the story’s incessant judgement upon her. The arc is as follows: Cage’s Ben, having moved in with Sera, falls deeper into his alcoholism and begins to resent her job as a sex worker. He cheats on her with another sex worker. When Sera catches him, she kicks him out of her house. Although the eagle-eyed viewer may notice that Sera’s reaction to unfaithfulness is more appropriate than Ben’s, the movie doesn’t seem to, framing her subsequent gang rape at the hands of three of her clients as karmic justice, much the same way Pulp Fiction presents the rape of mob boss Marcellus Wallace as something he brought on with his life of crime. Leaving Las Vegas believes that Sera pushed Ben to cheat, and is therefore wrong to be angry at him for it. As a result, her suffering, played over in flashback as she sits in the shower, is to be watched with some form of morbid, pitiful glee. It is directed as a cathartic moment for the audience, not unlike an action movie’s antagonist being shot in the head, or a horror movie’s monster being defeated.
In the final scene, Cage (who, like Shue, is not to blame for the film’s flaws) caps off his formidable performance by having sex with Sera in a final act of connection before he dies. The bitter writer intends this as an act of mutual redemption. The Motherly Prostitute has finally used her tainted body for good, and Ben has accepted it despite her past. Having done all he set out to do (that is, drink and get laid), Ben is able to pass away. Sera, heartbroken, cries over his corpse, and the movie ends. This finale may seem rather abrupt, but in fact, from the perspective of the intended audience, it is anything but. Ben dying ends the bitter male audience’s connection to the story, and to Sera. To even show her weeping at the sight of his lifeless body is indulgent on the part of the filmmakers, because without Ben, her existence is pointless in their eyes. In these final moments, Sera is not crying because Ben is gone. She is crying because she has disappeared with him, an empty shell without her man to wait on.
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