The Last Showgirl is quietly touching but takes a while to settle down, writes MATTHEW BOND

The Last Showgirl (15) 

Rating:

By tomorrow morning, we will know who the big winners have been at the Oscars, but one of the surprise losers is already clear. 

The Last Showgirl may have picked up nominations at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors’ Guild and Baftas, but when it came to the Academy Awards there was nothing, despite raw and bravely revealing turns from Pamela Anderson and Jamie Lee Curtis and the fact it’s directed by Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford, niece of Sofia… and Hollywood royalty.

It’s a shame because it’s a good and quietly touching film. Admittedly, it takes a little while to settle down as we get used to Coppola’s use of hand-held cameras, naturalistic sound and an Anderson seemingly stripped of all make-up, but we’re there well before the big moment around which the whole film pivots. 

The Razzle-Dazzle, a classic Las Vegas stage show which has kept Shelly (Anderson) in rhinestones, double denim and fast cars for more than 30 years and which once employed her hard-drinking, older friend Annette (Curtis) as a dancer too, is to close after a 38-year run.

Its younger dancers, the likes of Jodie (an excellent Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song) have two weeks to look for new jobs, but Shelly is distraught. 

The Razzle-Dazzle has been her life and while her estranged adult daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), can dismiss it as ‘a stupid nudie show’ she believes it is high art, a link not just to the great cabaret clubs of Paris but to theatre itself.

Nevertheless, she prepares to audition for the first time in decades… and to lie about her age. ‘I’m 36’, she announces in the heartbreaking opening, ‘no, I’m 42 – sorry, I’m nervous’. But it’s obvious to everyone that Shelly, like Anderson, is in her late 50s.

Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl. Despite missing out on the Academy Awards, it is a good and quietly touching film

Jamie Lee Curtis plays Annette in the film directed by Gia Coppola. It admittedly takes a while to get used to Coppola’s use of handheld cameras

Anderson is seemingly stripped of all make-up in the film. On a deeper level it is about ageing, dreams and female relationships

On one level, this is a film about the end of a Las Vegas era, an age of long-legged showgirls and sparkling headdresses.

But on a deeper level, it’s about ageing, dreams and female relationships, not just between biological mothers and daughters but the workplace version too, where the older women take care of their younger colleagues. Until they don’t, of course.

That all said, look out for Dave Bautista, who is a quiet revelation as Eddie, the show’s supportive stage manager and Shelly’s long-standing admirer.

The underlying story may be a little thin, but this ageing showgirl has clearly got some decisions to make.