Shaky screenwriting lets down a stylish film about a woman eaten up by the superficial pressures of showbiz
What a career Pamela Anderson has had, from world’s biggest pin-up to unwilling tabloid victim to comeback queen with a bombshell memoir – 2023’s Love, Pamela – telling her side of the story. She has thoroughly earned her goodwill – and in The Last Showgirl, as a Las Vegas dancer whose glittering revue show “Le Razzle Dazzle” is being shut down after three decades of success, she gives a wonderful, delicate performance as a woman eaten up by the superficial pressures of showbiz.
Director Gia Coppola – granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola – has style to spare, and her heart is in the right place when it comes to depicting a story of fading glamour and ageing womanhood. But Kate Gersten’s shaky screenplay doesn’t do much to help Anderson shine.
Coppola has the family eye for pristinely lit minimalist beauty. The film is shot in gorgeously textured 16mm and frequently using a handheld camera, giving a washed-out prettiness to this ugly Vegas underworld.
All rhinestones and false lashes, Anderson’s Shelly is a proud artist, likening her work to Parisian cabaret and cinema classics rather than anything that could remotely resemble a strip club. She’s a mother hen to a clutch of younger women in the biz (Kiernan Shipka as one troubled young dancer is particularly strong) but, at the age of 57 and after a successful 30-year stage run, is struggling to figure out her next move in an industry that has abruptly left her behind.
The fact is that she has aged out of a business that relies on youth and sexual appeal. She lies about her age to a camera crew for an audition, only to have a heartbreaking and righteous outburst at them when they clock it. She talks to her ex-boyfriend and stage manager about her options (Dave Bautista, thoughtful and well-cast here with his hulking frame belying his sensitivity). Meanwhile, her personal life suffers – Shelly’s semi-estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who has long felt shoved to the sidelines of her mother’s life and glamour, is all but forgotten about by her distracted mother.
Unfortunately, most of the relationships in the film – this mother-daughter one most of all – are superficially written. Hannah bitches to her mother about being left in a casino car park with a Gameboy as a child; it’s standard stuff straight out of the “bad showbiz parent” playbook. In fact, many elements of the film recall Darren Aronofsky’s 2008 film The Wrestler, in which the former professional boxer and ageing star Mickey Rourke channeled the wear-and-tear of a public-facing career into his role, but The Last Showgirl is too lacking in depth to have the same emotional impact.
One highlight includes a supporting performance from Jamie Lee Curtis as a gutsy cocktail waitress and longtime pal of Shelly’s. An enjoyable if utterly random performance she gives to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” should give you some sense of the fact that Curtis appears to be starring in her own film entirely. And while that “big” acting can sometimes be a drawback, here it injects some liveliness into what can otherwise feel like a dramatically inert 85-minute film. The conclusion, equally, drifts into ambiguity, offering the viewer no distinct ideas of what Shelly has learned or where she will go next.
There is a lot to garner from Anderson’s performance as a woman who has spent her life as the vessel of other people’s lust and projection; that is the main attraction of The Last Showgirl. But without the narrative scaffolding or depth to surround her character, Coppola’s film can often feel like a message in search of a movie.