TIFF Review: ‘The Last Showgirl’ is a Phenomenal Vehicle for Pamela Anderson’s Star Turn

It’s important to take pride in the work a person does, but that’s not always possible when a job is reluctantly taken to fulfill basic needs rather than to answer a sincere calling. Those who don’t get to choose how they make their money may eventually grow to love something that they didn’t initially expect to, but it’s hard to stay positive after many years without any change. The Last Showgirl spotlights someone who truly believes in what she does, a sentiment that strikes others as odd and delusional but fuels everything she is.

Shelley (Pamela Anderson) has been dancing as a showgirl in Las Vegas for decades. She’s been there so long that her best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) left long ago and is now a cocktail waitress, and Shelley serves as a den mother of sorts to two young dancers (Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song) less than half her age. When longtime stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) tells her that the show is set to close for good, Shelley finds herself spiraling, so caught up in this role that’s defined her so long and which has also cost her a relationship with her twenty-two-year-old daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd).

Director Gia Coppola, whose past credits include Mainstream and Palo Alto, delivers a film which serves as a complicated love letter to Las Vegas, showcasing one of its prime sources of entertainment that feels anything but modern. As a way of potentially saving the show, Shelley suggests that they make new advertising since she’s still the face of the marketing campaign, with photos from twenty years earlier. All these women live in Vegas and understand the main draw for visitors and locals to their workplaces, resigned to the reality of a dominant industry that serves as a major employment source.

This is, above all else, a chance for Anderson to rebrand herself with the role of a lifetime. Shelley is sweet and innocent, admonishing Shipka’s dancer when she does a routine she’s just performed for an audition that Shelley deems untoward, which Song’s less subservient protégé compares favorably to the show they do. Shelley believes that it’s a lost art that should be preserved, and that there’s something important about it as a piece of culture. She doesn’t feel that having done this work for thirty years is something that should bring shame or regret but rather pride.

Anderson’s performance carries this film, and she’s gifted with superb costars all around her. Shipka and Song have minimal roles but ones that exist in relation to Shelley in critical ways, and Curtis gets her standout moments as someone whose attitude couldn’t be more different than Shelley’s even if Annette is just as stuck in this world as she is. Lourd is a compelling scene partner for Anderson in the film’s most emotional scenes, as Hannah, who calls her mother by her first name and hasn’t seen her in over a year, probes Shelley for answers about why it is that dancing in a showgirl act was more important to her than raising her daughter. Bautista is also unexpectedly sweet as someone who never takes advantage of the girls he sees nearly nude on a nightly basis and comes closest to Shelley in the positive attitude he exudes towards this show and its production values.

There is a distinct look in The Last Showgirl that feels appropriately dated, not entirely updated from the 1980s just as Shelley, who still uses a landline and dresses in a way that reflects that era, is in a way. There are heartwarming moments of humor to be found in this film, which is ultimately about someone trying to figure out where she belongs in the present day, so self-assured in what she thought that any challenge to it sends her reeling. Anderson knocks it out of the park, and it’s difficult to shake this film in the best possible way.

Movie Rating: 8/10

Awards Buzz: This may well be Anderson’s comeback story, putting her in the Oscar race for the first time ever almost three decades after her big debut. Depending on where the film lands and when it’s ultimately released, it might be able to get her all the way there.