The first moments of The Last Showgirl hit like a static shock. We know the face that occupies its frames – shot tight, unnervingly tight – all too well. It belongs to Pamela Anderson, the pop culture behemoth and unfairly maligned bombshell who, in recent years, has wrested back the narrative through a stint in Chicago on Broadway, a paired autobiography and documentary, and a decision to go makeup free at public events. She’s come into full ownership, now, of the power that was always hers, generated by that megawatt smile, in those hazy blue eyes and peroxide blonde curls.
In Gia Coppola’s portrait of an artist in the midst of identity collapse, though, Anderson’s Shelly Gardner, a showgirl we first meet mid-audition, seems shockingly vulnerable. Her smile is a nervous twitch. Her eyes dart left and right. When an offscreen voice (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Coppola, who’s the granddaughter of Francis Ford) asks Shelly her age, it’s as if she’s just been struck by the interrogator’s spotlight. “36?” she whimpers. “Sorry, I lied, I’m 42.” She’s 57. “Distance helps!” she jokes.
