The audience was treated to the world premiere of her new film – the fascinating The Last Showgirl and Pamela Anderson who is a Canadian by birth declared to the packed audience “This is the role that I have dreamed of all my life” and then added roguishly that it was the very first “intellectual” movie she had been given.
Clear as day, there are more of this in store for this is a classic Anderson in her elder Vegas showgirl persona and the film from Gia Coppola – who swears she has always wanted to do a Las Vegas film, is witty, gentle, humorous, fair and wise all at once. And if you believe that it is heading toward the exploitational route, like ah, say, it’s NC-17 cousins Showgirls by Paul Verhoeven, you should perhaps rethink your assumptions.
This portrayal of the notoriously ostracised lives of Vegas dancers have little nudity and is character-based instead, rather similar to the underappreciated 1970 film The Grasshopper with Jacqueline Bisset as a Vegas dancer making her way to the top.
It is beneficial to have not only a female director as a guide but also a leading screenwriter, Kate Gersten, who studied that caesarean section Jubilee! show actors target those women who endure difficult nights on stage as show girls.
The Last Showgirl starts with Shelly (Anderson) who acts as though she is in an audition. At one point, she claims to be 36, only to later concede to 42 (which later on we learn and see that she is well into her 50s). It is now Coppola’s turn to look back and tell what really happened with Shelly – a tireless supporter of her life within the Le Razzle Dazzle show, even if majority of the days she is to be found deep into the line.
And, although there were a few moments that show her in all her stage glory, for most parts of this film Anderson had no make up on, and it was quite shocking considering how people have always known her to be since Baywatch.
But as we get to learn, there has been a cost which is felt in the words of her daughter Hannah (who portrays Billie Lourd well), who has grown up with Shelly as a single mother and bitter about all the nights out that Shelly spends away at the show rather than with her at home.
While attending a dinner with Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former showgirl turned waitress, two current showgirls: Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song and the long time producer of the show’s Eddie (Dave Bautista), the latter has a bombshell to deliver.
Le Razzle Dazzle is shutting down after 38 years, a shocking piece of news which makes Shelly leave in tears. It has been her entire life. What the hell does she think she will do? At her age who is going to hire her in an industry that will be filling jobs with the younger girls?
Shelly’s never-say-die attitude helps her to pull through, but this is a real low blow. And this is a film which last for 85 minutes and which was filmed during a span of only 18 days, at times does ramble just so that it can pause and give another ‘superb’ scene and other acting on it by Anderson.
When Eddie asks her out to dinner, all the flaring emotions of years of bottled anger and self-realisation rush forward. Both Anderson and Bautista who also seizes this unique chance to bring her dramatic side to the fore, were excellent in this part.
In particular, another strong scene that reminds one of the first scene of the film that Shelly is on the stage flashing her impressive flashes cut to with her being on the receiving end of dismissiveness from the director, a very good Jason Schwartzman, who is calling her Shari.
Whenever she shows resistance in leaving, he lays it all on her. ‘That’s what you sold. Young and sexy thing. You aren’t either anymore,’ he says, at last, to have her forcefully removed from the premises.
Anderson is terribly good in this way that suits not only her natural bullish optimism but also affords her a brief where she explains how her emotions are nakedly portrayed within. She will shatter your faith in love. I have always felt that she is a comic with untapped potential, particularly after viewing her ill-fated sitcom, Stacked, in 2005.
Nevertheless, I have never seen her display her dramatic skills, not quite to this extent at least, until now. And she goes all the way here. Curtis is brilliant, taking every single moment and scene in which she appears with her scathing Wit.
Nearly adamant with a face in full park strip smoky Sahara and long hair and short of a thing she has seen everything but knows the rules where to play the cards even if it be as a Situs judi casino waitress as she has now become to make ends meet.
One particular sequence has her getting all ‘in’ her inner showgirl once again as she is dancing unmindfully on a table smack in the middle of the nickel slots and proves that even now she can pull a trick or two. Curtis is simply amazing in this particular role.
Lourd recounts the character of Shelly’s daughter Lourd, perfectly portraying the characters disappointment of a mother who was absent and their interaction was quite emotive.
Shipka is really funny, especially by teaching a sexually provocative dance which she believes will enhance Shelly’s chances of getting auditions, while Song is self-aware enough to really figuratively know nowhere best places that Shelly thinks this impossible, impossible sort of life.
At the end of the day, as it almost always is right now, so it was in the beginning – this is Anderson’s moment and does she light up. There is an ending, however, which leaves us feeling positive.
The producers are Robert Schwartzman, Natalie Farrey. The Last Showgirl is looking for a distributor. This shouldn’t be a stage fright.
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