The Last Showgirl

Few celebrities have been as denigrated throughout their career as Pamela Anderson — and so a sober, wistful character study would seem the perfect vehicle for her to prove her acting chops. The former Baywatch star gives a quite literally glittering comeback performance in Gia Coppola’s latest, The Last Showgirl, a dreamy, understated ode to the underdogs of Las Vegas. After Mainstream and Palo Alto, Coppola jettisons her usual wryly humorous tone in favour of a more pensive mood. But the drama falls slightly short of being the heavy hitter it hopes to be.

Bedecked in feathers and rhinestones, Anderson embodies a livewire energy as Shelly, a Las Vegas Strip dancer who we first see lying about her age in an audition. Cut to roughly a week before, and Shelly is informed by her sweet-natured producer Eddie (Dave Bautista) that Le Razzle Dazzle, the show Shelly has been the face of for 38 years, has finally hit its last leg. Together with her troupe of much greener showgirls (including Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song), Shelly will soon be out of a job, wondering if she will have to transition to a casino cocktail waitress like her longtime pal Annette (a white-lipstick-wearing Jamie Lee Curtis). While weighing up what to do, she leaves a frenzied voicemail which summons her daughter (Billie Lourd) back into her life.

There is much to admire in Coppola’s meditation on motherhood.

And so begins Shelly’s existential crisis. Shot with fuzzy film stock and awash with shimmering costumes and lights, the reverie-like quality of The Last Showgirl makes it a notably muted addition to the Las Vegas cinematic canon — several notches down from the likes of Ocean’s Eleven, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas or its notorious predecessor, Showgirls. But Shelly is starting to wake up from this dream to the cruel reality of life in Sin City. Unable to land a job at the age of 57 (Jason Schwartzman briefly cameos as a straight-talking audition director to hit this point home) but having also sacrificed a meaningful bond with her daughter for her career, in rapid succession Shelly is punished for her life choices; mostly for being a woman.

There is much to admire in Coppola’s meditation on motherhood, ageing and Las Vegas’ hidden underbelly, though the script could have used some fine-tuning. Borrowing heavily from the likes of Sean Baker and even John Cassavetes, the film’s flimsy character development and clunky dialogue sometimes leave the valiant performances of Anderson, Shipka and Bautista feeling strangely adrift. And yet, even if the result is a little half-hearted, this is a hell of an impressive showcase for Anderson. If there’s any justice, it surely marks the start of her fully fledged return to the spotlight.