The Last Showgirl stars Pamela Anderson as a Las Vegas dancer who has reached the end of her career (too old). And she is wonderful, a revelation. I’d like to say I saw it coming but I did not. Did you? When she was doing all that bouncing in slo-mo along the beach in Baywatch did you ever think: Pammy’s going to make a fine dramatic actress one day? But she’s better than the film itself. It would be flimsy without her – plus her own backstory adds a whole other layer. ‘What you sold was young and sexy,’ her character is told at one point, ‘you aren’t either any more.’
The film is directed by Gia Coppola (Francis Ford’s granddaughter) and written by Kate Gersten (married to Gia’s first cousin) and produced by Robert Schwartzman (a cousin once removed) and there’s a cameo for Jason Schwartzman (another cousin) so if you happen to be after a film with Coppolas all over it, you’re not going to do better this week. But it’s Anderson’s film even so. She plays Shelly who, in the opening moments, is auditioning for a job saying she is 36 and then admitting to 42 even though she is obviously older. One has to commend Anderson, surely, for daring to actually look the age she is (57). She sings, she dances, her forehead moves!
We then flash back to the preceding weeks to understand where Shelly is at. For 30 years she had been part of Le Razzle Dazzle, an old school, topless feather and rhinestone revue.
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