★★★★ - THE POST
- Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis shine in The Last Showgirl -
We are in Las Vegas in the present day. Shelly Gardner is a veteran of the city who has been dancing in the once-legendary Le Razzle Dazzle review for 30 years. But with audiences falling away and change blowing through the business, Shelly is facing an unwanted redundancy. The review will close in three weeks, and the future looks bleak for a 57-year-old woman who has been a showgirl all her working life.
The Last Showgirl wasn't written specifically as a vehicle for Pamela Anderson. Her agent famously declined the film, without even showing Anderson the script. Which strikes me as a pretty telling anecdote about Anderson's entire career, and just one more clue as to why the ex-Baywatch icon and star of a thousand lads’ mags pictorials, was so absolutely perfect to play the misunderstood and much-exploited Shelly.
As the audiences dwindle, Shelly and her workmates navigate their impending unemployment as best they can. The younger dancers are busy auditioning for other shows, but even they are dismayed at the sleaze and pornographisation of their new roles.
"There used to be titillation. Now it's just tits," one of them declares, in a line that could have written itself.
Outside of work, Shelly is negotiating and trying to resurrect her relationship with her adult daughter. But Hannah has bitter memories of being left in cars in parking lots while Mom danced and Dad was absent, so it's going to take more than a cup of coffee and complimentary tickets to Shelly's last show to repair that rift.
Around Anderson, Billie Lourd (Scream Queens, and the only child of the late Carrie Fisher) is effective and very believable as Hannah, and Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) is down-beat and wonderful as Eddie, the show's producer and one of Shelly's few allies in the world. Bautista has been showing us for years - in Blade Runner 2049 and the under-rated Knock at the Cabin especially - that he has a wonderful capacity for decent dramatic roles. His work here should convince any last doubters.
But the twin stars of The Last Showgirl are Anderson, of course, who is heartbreakingly good, and Jamie Lee Curtis, who dials in another terrific support act as Shelly's best friend Annette, a retired dancer now making a meagre living as a morning-shift waitress on the casino floor.
The Last Showgirl plays like a restrained and audience-friendly companion piece to Coralie Fargeat's The Substance. And maybe also as a chronological bookend to Sean Baker's Anora, as another tale from an industry in which 90% of the workers are women, but men still control the purse-strings and schedules.
I don't know how The Last Showgirl wasn't nominated for at least a handful of Oscars - Anderson and Curtis both deserved a nod - but it did pick up nominations at the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the Screen Actors Guild.
The Last Showgirl is quite beautifully written and performed, and director Gia Coppola (Palo Alto) is in complete control of her material.
This is a poignant, engrossing and authentically moving film. Go and have a look.
- Graeme Tuckett, THE POST
The Last Showgirl is now playing at Light House Cinema!