This weekend’s new film release builds on an interesting trend from 2024. Though it’s not something embraced by major studios, like the deep dive into movie riffs on popular toys and video games, it’s proving to be an awards showcase for the “indie upstarts”. I’m writing of the new venues for the often neglected (by studio execs) bombshell superstar actresses from a few decades ago. Often they’re banished to straight-to-video (now streaming) sex or horror “potboilers”, or sent to be supporting players on series TV. Just a few months ago, cinephiles were stunned by the outrageous satire of THE SUBSTANCE and embraced the courageous, and meta (spoofing lots of old tabloid “fodder”) performance of its lead, Demi Moore (who is now a big Oscar “front-runner” after her Golden Globe win and touching acceptance speech). Historians can point to the brief spate of mature actress thrillers from the early 1960s (WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE and its ilk) as an inspiration for that film. Well, the other actress getting some awards love for a much more restrained story, but with a similar modern-day “pathos” and drama, is Pamela Anderson, who could very well claim the title of THE LAST SHOWGIRL.
The story opens up (after a brief “flash forward”) on Anderson as Shelly, the reigning “queen” of the long-running casino show “Razzle Dazzle”, as she hurries through a quick costume change and tries to trudge up the stairs to the stage without damaging all the sequins and feathers of her towering tiara. As the show’s producer, Eddie (Dave Bautista) bids goodnight over the intercom speakers, Shelly invites her younger co-stars, Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) and Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) over to her modest home for a BBQ Lunch on their “off” day. Joining them, along with Eddie, is a former showgirl now casino waitress, the acerbic Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis). Their high spirits are dampened by the mention of a rumor that the new owners of the casino will close the RD show and replace it with something younger and “edgier”. Shelly dismisses this as nonsense until the formal notices come down from “on high”. Only a dozen or so shows remain before the dwindling audiences. While Mary-Anne and Jodie scramble to find a new “gig”, Shelly wonders if she can stay relevant while also reflecting on her past glories. This prompts her to reach out to the daughter that she gave up for adoption many years ago, Hannah (Billie Lourd). Though the relationship is strained, they finally reconnect. As the final show looms, Shelly tries to repair that parental bond, while pondering her future in a world that doesn’t seem to have any need of her style of glamour and glitz anymore.
After being largely absent from view, aside from some cameos and a stint on Broadway in “Chicago”, Ms. Anderson commands the big screen with a remarkable nuanced performance as the sweet on the outside but hauntingly sad inside Shelly. At first glance, she may seem a bit ditzy and distracted, but as the story progresses we realize that she’s emotionally floundering, searching for any life preserver, as the vessel that is her existence is slowly sinking (and picking up speed into the depths of despair). As she nears her final “runway walk” she blocks any feelings of regret, proudly defending her choices to continue her “craft”. It all culminates in a heart-wrenching audition sequence in which Anderson summons her inner strength, demanding to be seen and not dismissed into the shadows of yesteryear. At times Shelly frustrates, but Anderson compels us to root for her, even as her reality cracks and crumbles. She gets great support in another mesmerizing turn from Curtis as her BFF Annette who has escaped the “stage game”, though she secretly yearns for the adoration of the audience, while also trying to shake up Shelly to face the choices still left to her. Song is solid as the more aggressive and world-weary “show sister” while Shipka is full of wide-eyed hope and hustle as the newbie will land on her “high heels” and conform to any demands of the market. Also well cast is Lourd as the estranged daughter who mixes her anger at her mother for being “cast off” with a general snarky disdain for the family “business”. The other big casting “against type” surprise is Bautista as the soft-spoken, brusque but still concerned Eddie, who hides a history with his girls and wants to help but is also looking to serve and please his new casino masters. And big kudos go to the small, almost a cameo, role of the shadowy audition director who is given a condescending venomous bite by Jason Schwartzman, as he delivers a “wake up” call with the violence of a swift “gut punch”.
Director Gia Coppola is a terrific addition to her family’s filmmaking dynasty by giving us a very tough, unflinching profile of a woman clinging to past glory as the world around her undergoes a seismic cultural shift. Working from the well-researched, emotionally intimate screenplay by Kate Gersten, Ms. Coppola gives us a “fly on the wall” look at the showier aspect of the service biz in Sin City. Full disclosure: I lived and worked in Vegas thirty years ago just as they were shifting from “family fun” to “adults-only playground”, so I recognized that air of sunbaked desperation that wafts over the street “buskers” and casino crews wondering if they can survive the next corporate “facelift” of the strip. Coppola and Gersten captured that panic to stay trendy and relevant as the tour groups and high-rolling “whales” were tiring of the traditional “main room” sparkly “t&a” two-drink minimum extravaganzas. The bonding of Shelly and her castmates feels almost like those of soldiers in the trenches awaiting the final charge (but here it’s a last show). My only complaint is that there are too many stretches and montage sequences of Shelly wandering past the employee casino entrances, perhaps as she recalls past encounters, but it’s unneeded “padding”. That’s a slight qualm as this is a most engaging look at a quickly disappearing legacy (Vegas cares little about its history), and s stellar acting triumph from Anderson, who dazzles in and out of the sequins and feathers, as THE LAST SHOWGIRL. “Places please, places…”
3.5 Out of 4
THE LAST SHOWGIRL opens in select theatres on Friday, January 10, 2025
