Pamela Anderson is ‘a revelation’ in poignant Las Vegas-set drama

Gia Coppola’s latest film is an atmospheric, relatable drama about showgirls on the Las Vegas Strip, featuring “vividly drawn characters” and standout performances from Jamie Lee Curtis and Pamela Anderson.

Pamela Anderson gives a remarkable performance and Jamie Lee Curtis is both funny and heartbreaking in Gia Coppola’s moving Las Vegas-set film, The Last Showgirl. Anderson plays Shelly, a dancer who has been performing in the same revue for 30 years, only to learn that the show is closing. At an age when she is unlikely to ever get a job like that again, Shelly has not only lost the job she loved, but her very identity.

In a supporting role, Curtis plays her friend Annette, a former showgirl who now works as a cocktail waitress at the same club, a job not ideal for her gambling addict. Las Vegas may be known for its glamour, but Anderson and Curtis’ lack of vanity is one of the film’s most striking features. Coppola portrays their lives with sympathy, yet with clear-eyed honesty about the dreams they never achieved and the youth they can never recapture.

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.

Hannah’s not wrong about the show, but it’s everything to Shelley. The film manages to strike a delicate balance between these two truths because Anderson embodies her character so authentically. She finally gets her big Oscar-worthy moment, sobbing and tearing her costume apart, but it’s her understated pathos before that that’s the real triumph of the performance. The actors make up for a script that’s often too frank. Shelley loves being seen on stage, she says, “and feeling beautiful.” She explains too much.

Coppola’s style is atmospheric, as in his previous two films. More than most directors, his impressionistic approach may not be to everyone’s tastes. Palo Alto (2013) was a sharp observation of high school life, while Mainstream (2020) was an ambitious portrayal of internet fame that ended up being the shallowness it was supposed to lampoon. The Last Showgirl is strong in its storyline, but it also relies on images and scenes that don’t have any bearing on the plot but give it depth. Annette dances alone near a gambling table, with the attitude of a former showgirl. But no one pays attention. Her cocktail dress, red coat and hat, a sort of imitation of a 1940s bellboy, look ridiculous. But Curtis makes it a moving expression of her character, a sad attempt to recapture, if only for a moment, her youth and attention that she once had.

There’s a lot of off-screen information in the film, including new images of Anderson. She was once the poster girl for Baywatch, but was praised last year for her role in the Netflix documentary “Pamela: A Love Story.” Viral The image of her attending Paris Fashion Week without makeup is recreated here.

And Coppola, Frances’ granddaughter and Sofia’s niece, produced the film along with many other family members. Her cousin, Jason Schwartzman, has a small but important role as the director whom Shelley auditions for. His brother, Robert Schwartzman, is one of the producers. Screenwriter Kate Gersten, a successful TV writer and playwright, is married to another cousin. Coppola’s mother, Jackie Getty, designed the costumes. Though she has all the advantages of her nephew, “The Last Showgirl” proves that Gia Coppola has a true artist’s eye and a rich, distinctive style of her own.