The Last Showgirl review: ‘Pamela Anderson dazzles’

Who knew? In this moving, beautifully observed study of life as an ageing Las Vegas showgirl, the former Playboy model and Baywatch star Pamela Anderson reveals serious acting talent.

Anderson’s Shelly is by far the longest-serving performer in Razzle Dazzle, an old-school show in which a procession of heavily made-up girls walk around the stage in revealing rhinestone-studded costumes while carrying great plumes of feathers.

“We are ambassadors for style and grace,” claims Shelly against all the evidence, much of it provided by a superb Jamie Lee Curtis as her best friend Annette – a tough and tender-hearted cocktail waitress and herself a former showgirl whose low-rent life Shelly knows is her most likely future.

After performing in Razzle Dazzle for 38 years, the number of days Shelly’s body can pretend to be decades younger are numbered. So too now is the life of the old-fashioned production itself. Dave Bautista’s sorrowful, monosyllabic stage manager Eddie – with whom Shelly has history – has announced that the show is to close. You could argue that revealing human frailty beneath the glitz of Vegas is low-hanging fruit for director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis Ford).

Kate Gersten’s smart and tender script is how the city’s trash culture ruthlessly discards women who were once only valued for the way they looked.

But the more powerful point made by Kate Gersten’s smart and tender script is how the city’s trash culture ruthlessly discards women who were once only valued for the way they looked.

We are cheek-by-jowl in the changing rooms where Shelly and her fellow cast members hurriedly bedeck themselves in complicated costumes; we rush with them through breeze-block corridors to make their stage entrance on time

With exteriors filmed in broad daylight that make Vegas’s buildings look like a giant toddler’s neglected toys, Coppola’s intimate direction keeps us hooked. We are cheek-by-jowl in the changing rooms where Shelly and her fellow cast members hurriedly bedeck themselves in complicated costumes; we rush with them through breeze-block corridors to make their stage entrance on time; and we are with Shelly in her bungalow when her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) visits, bringing with her nothing but resentment for how her childhood always came second place to showbiz.

Meanwhile, Anderson is a revelation, a vision not only of frailty but resilience too.

Classification: 15

★★★★