Of all the people who have found themselves thrust into fame, few have had a life and career quite like Pamela Anderson. The model-turned-actress became an international icon in the 1990s thanks to Baywatch and has remained one of the world's most recognizable figures for decades. However, her fame hasn't always fully been on her own terms until rather recently when she has taken on projects from performing on Broadway to working on a documentary as well as an autobiography that offered a deeper look at her life and talents beyond the tabloid headlines that followed her.
All of this inevitably informs our expectations for Gia Coppola's delicate drama The Last Showgirl and Anderson's leading role in it, though it remains important to draw a line between reality and fiction. There are parallels to be drawn between Anderson and her character Shelly, a veteran showgirl whose Vegas show is ending after 30 years. But it's more than just sharp metatextual casting, serving as a solid (if a bit narratively slight) demonstration of how good Anderson can be when given thoughtful material.
Namely, the film explores the desire to make meaning out of the work we do, the modern precarity of labor in the United States, and what we tell ourselves to get through the day. While distinct, The Last Showgirl gives Anderson her own version of 2008's The Wrestler crossed with the 2018 film Support the Girls, as it gestures toward a complicated communal portrait of the far younger coworkers Shelly performs alongside. While not as good as either of those films, Anderson elevates it with just how genuinely earnest she can be in one moment and shockingly selfish in another. We see all of who Shelly is in her performance as she continues to cling to a dream that has long since faded, even as it results in her losing touch with her only daughter. While it occasionally veers into familiar clichés as she tries to reconnect with her, Anderson always carries it through.
In particular, the scenes that she shares with the show's softhearted stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) represent the film's unexpected yet earned high points. The complicated, sad history they share, while not always smoothly teased out, is felt in their sturdy naturalistic performances. There is also a scene-stealing Jamie Lee Curtis as Shelly's charismatic former coworker and friend, who we come to realize is also struggling more than she is always willing to let on. Even as the way these various storylines play out can feel slightly undercooked, it's the small conversations and fleeting confessions they make to each other that draw you into the rough textures of her world.
Most interestingly, we rarely see Shelly performing on stage. Rather than feel disappointing, it's critical framing that prioritizes hearing from her about how meaningful this work is to her before seeing how it may not be as magnificent as she needs it to be. This is again what gives the film similar thematic heft to The Wrestler, which was about juxtaposing the larger-than-life personas of wrestlers with the fragile flesh and blood people bringing them to life. In The Last Showgirl, while Shelly has more of a life and people she cares about, she remains drawn to the glamor of being on the stage. The striking cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw instills proceedings with an appropriately hazy feel, but it still holds the dreamlike catharsis its character wants at a distance.
She keeps grasping for something to make it all mean something, because what else does she have? Shelly, portrayed with care by Anderson, is painfully human, prone to insecurity and ego as she tries to continue performing as long as she can. When she gives her one last performance and we finally accompany her onto the stage, the final joyful smile etched on her face breaks the heart. There is no triumph to getting to witness this, only tragedy. Even after a lifetime of doing so and after everything she's given up, she's still clinging to her spotlight before it all goes dark.
The Last Showgirl