Toronto International Film Festival 2024 – The Last Showgirl ★★★★★

Released: TBC (UK)

Director: Gia Coppola

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis

Gia Coppola’s third feature does for Pamela Anderson what the Safdie brothers did for Adam Sandler in gloriously meta fashion.

Giving new life to a woman famously scorned by the entertainment business, Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, written by Kate Gersten, leads Pamela Anderson’s career renaissance into a new age, celebrating of the past Playboy playmate’s largely under-appreciated and under-estimated talent. The film’s opulent aesthetics radiate through expert direction and supporting performances, with Coppola’s nostalgia-laden Vegas feature presenting the worthy redefinition of an icon. Through The Last Showgirl, Pam is finally given her chance to shine in a role made just for her; a role she described at the Toronto International Film Festival World Premiere as one she’s been getting ready for her whole life.

The film follows the events leading up to the end of Shelley’s (Pamela Anderson) career as a Las Vegas showgirl, having starred in the long-running stage show ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’ from the 80s right up to present day. As the last remaining traditional ‘nudie’ show in Sin City, ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’, much like Shelley herself, has grown kitsch and irrelevant, with her beautiful young colleagues (Keirnan Shipka and Brenda Song) a reminder of her self-inflicted stagnation. When show producer Eddie (Dave Bautista) announces the show’s closure, Shelley and her fellow showgirls are forced to adjust to a new way of thinking, working and living, though as Shelley discovers, the life of a 50-something-dancer requires far more resilience than that of her younger counterparts.

What ultimately makes The Last Showgirl work is its fundamental theme of modernity vs tradition, or more precisely; sex vs class, which runs through Gersten’s pristine script and intergenerational characters with equal vigour. As Shelley critiques the girls audition dances for new Vegas shows as “so low class”, we begin to see the romanticised perspective she holds of herself, seeing her career as a part of something more glamorous, traditional and elite. She holds up a nostalgic mirror to her past, in the hope of glimpsing some reassurance that what once was crude is now ‘classic’. No-one more agonisingly points out Shelley’s self-indulgence than that of her daughter Hannah, played by Billie Lourd, forcing Coppola’s soft-edged lens of sentimentality to be removed in a brutal confrontation of whether her abandonment of Hannah was really worth it.

With the help of its formidable supporting cast, led by the ever-excellent Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelley’s fake tanned and concealer-lipped best friend Annette, The Last Showgirl glitters with nuanced emotion and humour. In one scene, we see Curtis and Anderson hitting their respective rock bottoms in a rich collage of stagey shots and ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’; Anderson pondering her life’s trajectory and Curtis performing an impromptu dance number. Without the plushy filter and composition, such a performance from Curtis’ character might be considered as humorous to a cinema audience, or indeed those in the casino around her, but the only evocation through Coppola’s cinematic lens is that of beauty and deep sadness.

Much like Shelley, Pamela has always been forced to prove herself. In the 2023 Netflix Documentary Pamela, A Love Story, we saw the world famous TV star and glamour model tell her side of the story; a story relentlessly twisted by the press at every opportunity throughout her long-term fame. A fitting parallel to The Last Showgirl, the documentary was a re-evaluation of women in the public eye from the 90s – noughties, as well as a personal insight into the abuse endured by the sex icon under the rule of the mass media. Watching Coppola’s film with this insight in mind is a must to uncovering its self-referential pleasure, where Pamela’s performance as Shelley the ‘last’ showgirl speaks to a struggle far beyond that of the Las Vegas strip.

Where Shelley’s monster is time, Pam’s has always been the media, though through Coppola’s film Anderson is given the opportunities her character isn’t; a chance to prove her worth as an artist that’s more than just her ‘looks. As the lights dim on ‘Le Razzle Dazzle’ and Shelley’s career, Pam’s is beginning again, in a fitting second-act for this fearless leading lady and a role which will cement her legacy far better than any historical headline.’