The Last ShowgirlReview: Pamela Anderson Finally Gets Her Chance to Dazzle

Mar. 15, 2025

Anderson as Shelly, a quietly desperate dancer in Las Vegas.Photo:Roadside Attractions

Roadside Attractions

Pamela Anderson’s career has brought her great renown, which perhaps is just a polite way of saying great notoriety. Her fame rests, for the most part, on the lightweight beach hitBaywatchand her sex-tape scandal with rockerTommy Lee. This latter incident served as the basis of an entertaining but less-than-reverent Hulu limited series,Pam & Tommy,which starred Lily James and Sebastian Stan.

The public is fond of Anderson — she’s a survivor, and a straight-shooter — but as an actress she’s never been taken seriously. UnlikeCher, she had noSilkwood,noMoonlight.Instead she hadBarb Wire.A review of that 1996 action film described her as “the well-known pinup and conversation piece.”

The film is a small but empathetic study of 57-year-old Shelly, whose decades-long employment in an act calledLe Razzle Dazzleis unexpectedly coming to an abrupt end — a just-announced closing is days away.

Shelly is distressed and completely baffled. She regardsRazzle Dazzleas the epitome of sophistication, although anyone can can see it’s too dull to attract an audience. You’d have a hard time rounding up even dirty old men to fill the seats. But Shelly will still go on about the crudity of newer shows in town, insisting thatRazzle Dazzlehas an elegant French tone.

Perhaps she’s thinking of the Folies Bergère or the Moulin Rouge. Her reference point, unfortunately, should be Marie Antoinette in a tumbril, en route to the guillotine.

When Shelly auditions for a new show, its casting director (Jason Schwartzman) brutally dismisses her as a once-nubile no-talent, probably a never-talent. This is likely the truth, but Shelly is too cluelessly proud to believe him.

But what will Shelly’s future be? She considers it a step down to become s cocktail waitress like her friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis, orange-tanned and running herself ragged with desperate energy). She’s in great shape, certainly, and she can flash a smile wide and bright enough to be seen clear out in the Mojave Desert. Still, her days of glitter and sequins are going, going, gone, heading for the dark cavern whereSiegfried, Royand their tigers sleep for eternity. The more serious question is whether she’ll be losing her identity, as well.

Jamie Lee Curtis as Annette, a casino waitress.Roadside Attractions

There’s a sad blankness to Shelly, who speaks in a high, urgent voice and stares at everyone with a look of astonishment. She’s always a few beats behind, even more guileless than Elizabeth Berkley in 2005’sShowgirls,director Paul Verhoeven’s camp Vegas classic.

This opaqueness isn’t a flaw — if anything, more movies should resist explaining away the mysteries, however small, of their characters. It’s both a fantasy and a dramatic cop-out to pretend that a change in circumstances will always reveal startling new depths of character.

Director Mike Leigh’s superb new dramaHard Truths,for instance, is about an implacably difficult woman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) who blasts everyone in the vicinity with sarcastic abuse until she collapses into a profound depression. But the film gives us only a few clues about how she became who she is. (Or, rather, the film gives us just as much information as we need.)

It’s worth noting, perhaps, that Baptiste’s performance has an enigmatic resonance that director Gia Coppola hasn’t found in Anderson’s — the sense there’s a degree of existential mystery and meaning hidden behind an unliftable veil. Anderson acts with such plain, dedicated honesty she could be the star of a documentary.

Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl”.Courtesy of TIFF

Courtesy of TIFF

But the performance, taken for what it is, is a critical breakthrough for her. In interviews she’s clearly thrilled with this sudden elevation in her status — she even dida spot for the prestigious Criterion film collection, talking about her passion for actress Jean Moreau and director Federico Fellini, and whimsically floating the idea that she’d love to star in a remake of Katharine Hepburn’sSummertime.

She’s no longer a mere showgirl.

The Last Showgirlis in theaters now.

source: people.com