The Last Showgirl

Most films set in Las Vegas centre on the high-wattage neon glow of The Strip. But the latest from Gia Coppola (Palo Alto, TIFF ’13) turns that tradition around, showing us a story from behind the lights, with a captivating and affecting lead performance by Pamela Anderson.

Shelley (Anderson) has been a Las Vegas showgirl for over 30 years, the feather and crystal–adorned centrepiece of Sin City’s last remaining traditional floor show. The stage and the women she shares it with are her loving, bickering, sequin-clad family. When the stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista, an island of masculinity in a sea of women) announces the show will close permanently in two weeks, Shelley and her co-workers must make decisions for their future. But the future looks different when you are 50 rather than 20, and your sole job skill is dancing.

Emotionally floundering, Shelley tries to reconnect with a daughter she hardly knows, which proves just as difficult as losing the only job she has ever had. Bolstered by her best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a brash cocktail waitress who laughs a little too loud and too often, Shelley must find her place in a world that she shut the (stage) door on years before.

Coppola’s camera slyly but gently goes everywhere with her characters, capturing the childlike bewilderment on Shelley’s face as she absorbs news, and the heartbreaking compassion emanating from Eddie’s eyes as he delivers it. The director’s capable hand with a superb company of actors highlights the all-too-human sensitivities behind the harsh glare of those famous neon signs and stage lights.

JANE SCHOETTLE