Director: Gia Coppola Starring: Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Billie Lourd, Jason Schwartzman Running Time: 89 minutes
It has felt a little hard lately to avoid the fact that everything is getting worse all the time. For me, at least. Every day it feels as if an additional piece of the culture I grew up aspiring to be a part of has been chipped away by the march of the newer, the sexier and the cheaper. One such institution circling the drain of irrelevance is the perennial Las Vegas strip show. Not something I personally had aspired to be a part of, but Shelly (Pamela Anderson), the beating heart at the centre of Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, knows no other life beyond those low brow stages. After three decades as a part of ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’, a chintzy nudie show covered in sequins and rhinestones, constantly reiterated in film as the last of its kind, Shelly is forced to consider what life after means when the show’s perhaps overdue closing date draws close.
Anderson’s work as Shelly is the film’s obvious centrepiece and she has a lot to draw on in the role. Having been such an exposed (in all senses of the word) icon of American cheesecake through the feverishly misogynistic mass culture of the 90s and 00s, as well as more recently exploited in the prestige television re-enactment of her non-consensually circulated sex tape in Pam & Tommy, there is an easy-flowing empathy seeing her on screen as Shelly. That’s not to say Anderson is simply playing herself though, Shelly has a short-sighted naivety in her desperate attempts to claw out a life for herself after the stage that feels so wholly embodied by her high tension physicality and the incredible tool that is her wholly unique, lighter than a feather, voice.
The film has a robust supporting cast that give Anderson ample room to work. Jamie Lee Curtis is here for a bafflingly BAFTA nominated performance which, to its credit, weaponises her somewhat nails on a chalkboard qualities to an effect I found far more effective than her turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Dave Bautista turns in some very sensitive work as the show’s AV producer, a relentlessly kind and caring presence that is characteristic of Bautista’s typically excellent dramatic work, in between the streaming action flicks and movies where they make him be friends with a precocious child that have filled his filmography in recent years. Billie Lourd is somewhat distracting as Shelly’s estranged, supposedly 22 year old daughter despite being a full decade older, and has grown into looking so completely like her mother it was all I could think about when she was on screen. There’s even a short and sweet single scene performance from noted Best Coppola Jason Schwartzman with some truly ridiculous hair and makeup decisions. My favourite of this merry band however was Kiernan Shipka as Jodie, Shelly’s youngest co-worker. She’s the closest the film has to a direct opposite of Shelly’s perspective, someone with all the wonder and respect for the form that Shelly does without having had that optimism eroded by time, she’s more ready for the future but she has unduly high hopes for the outcome.
Gia Coppola’s style here often feels like a weaker imitation of her aunt Sofia, echoing her penchant for deconstructing modern myth by attempting to pull the veil off a glamorous American tourist trap like Las Vegas and sharing her camera’s obsession with all of the ornately kitschy details dotted around the place, though it is somewhat dulled by the bizarre creative choice to constantly shoot things out of focus. All that said, the film’s strong ensemble makes good work of ensuring you’ll never be too troubled over the brief sub-90 minute runtime.
(3 / 5)