The Last Showgirl (15, 88 mins)
Verdict: Anderson sparkles
Widely regarded as a comeback vehicle for Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl, as vehicles go, is less a gleaming Rolls-Royce than a battered pick-up truck.
But that is not to denigrate Gia Coppola’s low-key, melancholic film. In fact, if you’ll pardon what amounts to blasphemy, it is a more impressive piece of cinema than her illustrious grandfather’s last picture.
Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024) was a wildly extravagant, fanciful, bloated flop. The Last Showgirl – less than 90 minutes long and shot in 18 days, for peanuts – is miles more watchable.
Anderson might owe her fame to the 1990s TV behemoth Baywatch, and to a Playboy centrefold before that, but all being well she will end up owing her reputation to projects such as this.
We all remember her knockers… by which of course I mean those who disdainfully wrote her off as shallow tabloid fodder, first as a Baywatch babe and later for her tempestuous marriage to rock drummer Tommy Lee.
But she is a really fine, empathetic actress, whose performance in The Last Showgirl (adapted by Kate Gersten from her own play) is a genuine treat.
Anderson is perfectly cast as the film’s title character, Shelly, a veteran dancer in Le Razzle Dazzle, a vaguely ‘erotic’ Parisian-style revue that has run for 38 years in a Las Vegas casino.
The show has become an anachronism, and is shortly to be put out of its misery by the casino owners.
Survivor: Pamela Anderson as veteran chorus girl Shelly in The Last Showgirl
Widely regarded as a comeback vehicle for Pamela Anderson , The Last Showgirl, as vehicles go, is less a gleaming Rolls-Royce than a battered pick-up truck
Anderson is perfectly cast as the film’s title character, Shelly, a veteran dancer in Le Razzle Dazzle
But Shelly, who has been kicking her legs up since the early days and at 57 is still sporting the feathered headdresses and sequinned leotards alongside dancers a third of her age (one of them very nicely played by Kiernan Shipka, who was little Sally Draper in the TV drama Mad Men), is aghast when she hears that the final curtain is about to fall. It’s her living. What else will she do?
One option is to join her old friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former dancer now working as a cocktail waitress who, if she thinks it is demeaning to receive dollar tips in her prominent cleavage from gamblers who only have eyes for the slot machines, doesn’t show it. After all, she has gambling issues herself.
Scarcely recognisable beneath a helmet of dyed red hair and acres of glittering eyeshadow, Curtis gives a rip-roaring performance. A scene in which Annette gyrates alone and unwatched in the casino, as Bonnie Tyler belts out Total Eclipse Of The Heart over the sound system, is all the more sad for being inspired by real life.
It was unscripted until Curtis and Coppola saw a cocktail waitress doing just that in a Vegas casino, explaining that she’s a ‘bevertainer’ who must dance on a platform three times every shift.
Coppola has manifestly taken inspiration from Sean Baker’s films in her depiction of this wretched slice of Americana.
But just like the lap-dancers and sex- workers in Baker’s latest movie, the Oscar-nominated Anora, Shelly and Annette don’t see it as wretched. In a way, that’s the point – underlined by Eddie, the kind-hearted long-time manager of Le Razzle Dazzle (a lovely performance against type by Dave Bautista), who assures Shelly she’s a ‘legend’.
The story’s poignancy is ramped up, strenuously and in truth a little artificially, when Shelly gets a visit from her semi-estranged grown-up daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who berates her for having put her career before her parenting duties.
Coppola has manifestly taken inspiration from Sean Baker’s films in her depiction of this wretched slice of Americana
Scarcely recognisable beneath a helmet of dyed red hair and acres of glittering eyeshadow, Curtis gives a rip-roaring performance
But Shelly, splendidly, stands up for herself. Decades of half-naked hoofing in front of leering customers haven’t destroyed her pride.
Like Mikey Madison’s title character in Anora, Shelly might be a victim, but she is also a survivor.
Not even a humiliating audition for a new job as a dancer in a circus, before a dismissive director (Jason Schwartzman), can wipe out what she still believes has been her gift to the world: ‘breasts and rhinestones and joy’.
The Last Showgirl is in cinemas from today.
My Oscar predictions… and who I think should win
The 97th Academy Awards are dished out in Hollywood this Sunday and there’s firm evidence that the movies aren’t what they used to be: the Best Picture losers 30 years ago included Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, while 50 years ago Chinatown and The Conversation were among those pipped by The Godfather Part II.
Still, there are some very good pictures up for Oscars this time, and a raft of excellent acting performances.
Here are my predictions of who will win in the major categories — along with those I’d prefer to see walking off with the statuette.
BEST PICTURE… Will Win: Conclave. Should Win: Anora
Anora is the bookies’ favourite but not everyone loved it. Indeed, there are those who think (wrongly in my view) that it celebrates the exploitation of women. It would be a worthy winner but I have a feeling Conclave might spring a surprise.
BEST ACTOR… Will Win: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist). Should Win: Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)
Brody is terrific as an emigre architect in post-war America. But the film is overrated. There are better, more nuanced performances. Like Chalamet’s, who is brilliant as Bob Dylan, and does all his own guitar-playing and singing, so convincingly.
BEST ACTRESS… Will Win: Demi Moore (The Substance). Should Win: Mikey Madison (Anora)
Hollywood loves to see an old trouper confounding expectations. And Moore gives a remarkably committed performance. But Madison is simply magnificent as a fiery, resourceful New York lap-dancer.
Magnificent: Mikey Madison, with Mark Eydelshteyn, in Anora
Anora is the bookies’ favourite but not everyone loved it
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR… Will Win: Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain). Should Win: Same!
Culkin (Roman Roy in Succession) plays a heightened version of himself (or possibly irksome Roman). But that shouldn’t stop him winning for so cleverly encapsulating his character’s nervy wit and underlying sadness.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS… Will Win: Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez). Should Win: Same!
Emilia Perez was the front-runner for Best Picture until things went badly wrong for its trans star Karla Sofia Gascon. But I feel sure the Academy will recognise the film’s other eye- catching performance, by Saldana.
BEST DIRECTOR… Will Win: Brady Corbet (The Brutalist). Should Win: Sean Baker (Anora)
The Brutalist is a mighty film, if only in terms of its prodigious length. Corbet deserves his nomination, but I would much rather see Sean Baker get the coveted gong.
