By Mr. Will Wong
After a successful festival circuit run and some recent awards season momentum, Gia Coppola‘s THE LAST SHOWGIRL is poised to deliver upon its promise. This portrait of an aging Showgirl who must come to terms with what’s next after the revue she’s been performing in for 30 years, closes abruptly.
The Drama centers around Shelley (Pamela Anderson), who has seen a Showgirl’s last lavish days in Las Vegas, seeing a yesteryear that possessed much prestige and glamour. Times have changed, with audiences dwindling at the revue in which she performs. She sees her younger colleagues Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) also have to go out and audition for other opportunities, but she wants to keep working. This also means she’d be up against the likes of them for roles, which can be tough in an ageist industry. At once, Shelly works on reconciling her relationship with estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who never quite has forgiven her for choosing work over being fully present for her growing-up.
THE LAST SHOWGIRL gives Anderson the assignment of a lifetime and she excels here, capturing Shelley’s enduring optimism. She truly takes her on a journey and things get interesting particularly when her world begins to unravel. The paycheques diminish, the auditions elsewhere don’t go well and her daughter wants answers. And if anyone would know a thing about paying a price for her past and her beauty, it’s Anderson. Her performance here exhibits a quiet maturity that she could only have brought to Shelley at this stage in her life and some of the painful things she’s been through in the public eye.
Also notable is a barely-recognizable Jamie Lee Curtis as Annette, Shelley‘s free-spirited longtime friend who formerly was a Showgirl also. She now is a waitress at the casino, seeing some of her younger colleagues getting more shifts than she. This performance feels lived-in and familiar. Writer Kate Gersten bases this Script off her own real-life experiences visiting Jubilee!, a famed Las Vegas Strip-based production that ran for about 30 years and originally intended for this to be a Play. She crafts a meaningful and empathetic ode to those who live for the grind, and might not have a pension saved-up while pursuing their dreams and living in the moment.
Coppola, like Anderson, really makes a statement here with career-best work, demanding to be seen and heard in the most nuanced way.
Mongrel Media release THE LAST SHOWGIRL January 17, 2025.
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