The Last Showgirl (2024) - Pamela Anderson airbrushes her razzle dazzle life in Gia Coppola’s tragic drama

Credit: allocine.fr

We are in an age of ageing women on camera – first came Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, in which Demi Moore destroys herself trying to stay young with a black market drug; followed Halina Reijn’s Babygirl, in which Nicole Kidman’s high-powering CEO plays cat and mouse with suave intern Harris Dickinson; and of course, the struggling singleton Bridget Jones, now widow and mother and faced (albeit still humorously) with the very real contemplation of growing old alone. Enter The Last Showgirl, a bulldozer of a drama from Gia Coppola, featuring Pamela Anderson – who had largely given up on acting before the script was passed on to her by her son – at the helm. It’s a truly heart-wrenching story, and the equivalent of what a film would be like if it drew inspiration from a photograph – told with very little exposition, dropped in media res, it is a snapshot of a small but significant event in the lives of its characters, with the aura of a distant memory captured as a gritty image.

Anderson takes the stage as Shelly, a fifty seven year old showgirl who is told that the show she has been in for the past thirty years, Le Razzle Dazzle, is to be shut down due to low ticket sales. At a loss with what to do next, disillusioned by more modern shows, Shelly turns to her younger co-stars, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), and ex-showgirl and friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) for support – but amidst the final two weeks of the show, it becomes clear that she must also look inward, at the life she has led and the sacrifices she has made to live it.

Never having seen Anderson on screen before, I was taken aback by her performance – her way of carrying herself is quite something. She is seemingly ditzy, with her shrill voice and angelic face with locks of blonde hair – and yet she is also incredibly determined, dedicated to her craft and principled on the matter of the shows that come after Le Razzle Dazzle. Yet, the question The Last Showgirl poses is determination for what. This is, in every way, shape and form, a film with a truly sad core – and it is never really clear whether Shelly comes to terms with the decisions she has made. At times, her willpower gives way to a sudden cloudiness behind her eyes, when she tries to reconcile with estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) in the strangest of ways, or stands at the top of the building looking at the Vegas skyline. But her blindness – or willingness to stay blind – is also what makes her loyalty to and protectiveness of the show beautiful. The sense coming out of it is that Shelly should be pitied rather than condemned – the audition scene at the latter half of the film, presided over by a grotty and shadowed Jason Schwartzman, is a particularly gruelling one to sit through. And yet, this seems like a bit of cruel message to walk away with. Shelly does not want to be pitied. She is headstrong, but this does not mean she can avoid facing her future – Annette, now a struggling cocktail waitress getting her shifts shortened to make room for the younger, prettier staff, is the very image of what she may become. Caught between present and future, Shelly chooses to opt for the past – for the times when the shows were good, when she was plastered over magazines and flown across the world for promo shots. This is something Jodie and Mary-Anne, who are just trying to survive on the Vegas strip, cannot comprehend in her eyes – they do not see the art they are taking part in. Neither does Eddie (Dave Bautista, who is excellent despite ninety percent of his lines being “clears his throat”), who plans to stay on to produce the circus show taking over. Shelly does not let go easily – but The Last Showgirl suggests that her values are warped. Has she wasted her life, then, chasing a dream that was never meant to be? Maybe, but like the film itself, she hangs on with strength and passion, banking on the snapshot memory of something that was once truly beautiful.