“This is the role I have been waiting for my entire career,” Pamela Anderson told the crowd at the Toronto Film Festival. Anderson has seen a long overdue career resurgence in the 2020’s, from her 2022 stint as Roxie in Chicago, to her 2023 Netflix documentary and autobiography. It was after seeing the documentary that director Gia Coppola decided to cast her in The Last Showgirl. In a world that’s finally confronting the way we’ve treated women in the spotlight, it’s heartening to see Pamela finally being taken seriously. But the film, despite all the right elements being there, frustratingly doesn’t fully deliver on all that it promises.
Anderson plays Shelly, a Las Vegas showgirl in her fifties who has poured her soul into the revue, Le Razzle Dazzle, for decades. Her whole world crumbles when Eddie, the showrunner played by Dave Bautista, announces the show is closing soon. There’s an undeniable similarity to The Wrestler (2008), also shot on 16mm to tell a raw, intimate story of a character clinging to their profession long past their prime. Both stories served as comeback vehicles for their leads—Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler and now Anderson. But despite Anderson’s fantastic performance, a few script and direction issues dull the film’s impact.
The cinematography serves the movie well. You feel for Shelly in the bleak confines of the tired backstage area, and as she gazes out at the Las Vegas landscape, the buildings hazy and out of focus. The chemistry among the cast is excellent. Bautista is especially affecting as Eddie, but a backstory between him and Shelly begs for deeper exploration. There are several funny moments throughout the film, but just as many disjointed ones, such as Jamie Lee Curtis’s character randomly dancing in the casino to Total Eclipse of the Heart. It’s a visually striking and tragic moment, but is left hanging in the air. Miley Cyrus also contributed to the soundtrack by recording a poignant and haunting original track Beautiful That Way.
Shelly is desperate to reconnect with her estranged daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), who she neglected as a child for her career. Hannah surprises Shelly by attending Le Razzle Dazzle and, once backstage, blasts her for choosing a ‘stupid show’ over being her mother. She points out that Shelly isn’t as much a centrepiece in the show as she makes herself out to be, which is more than Shelly, fully committed to her delusions, can handle. Later, one of Shelly’s fellow showgirls, who sees her as a surrogate mother, comes to her in a crisis. Heartbreakingly, Shelly turns her away. You would expect all of this tension to come to a climax, but it never fully does.
The film suggests throughout that we are building towards a final performance, but the ending is left deliberately ambiguous. Unlike The Wrestler or Black Swan (2010), where the final performances deliver a moment of transcendence or destruction, The Last Showgirl leaves us without a visceral moment that defines Shelly’s fate.
The Last Showgirl is a tragic tale about ageism, sexism and nostalgia for lost art forms. Stellar performances and visuals allow us to empathise with the characters and their well-defined world, but the movie denies us any sense of catharsis by holding back emotional resolution. Still, Anderson’s performance has finally earned her some major acting nominations and proved she’s worthy of respect (as if she ever wasn’t.) With two more films in the pipeline, The Naked Gun and Rosebush Pruning, let’s hope this is just the beginning.
7/10
