TIFF 2024: The Last Showgirl Review (and Thoughts on the Comeback Narrative of Pamela Anderson)

One of the biggest comebacks of the 2024 awards season comes covered in sequins.

Awards season is a time for comebacks. The film industry loves nothing more than to pat itself on the back in congratulations as stars of days gone by return to the spotlight, often after a period of hardship and mockery (or outright exclusion and cruelty.) Being on the ground at TIFF is an interesting opportunity to see these rebirth narratives take shape first-hand. I was there as they leapt head-first into bolstering the Brenaissance that led to Brendan Fraser's Oscar win for The Whale (although let's be honest, we all just pretend he actually won it for The Mummy.) 2024 has been a strong year for the comeback, correctly or otherwise: Josh Hartnett, Winona Ryder, Demi Moore. But while this trio is experiencing a period of public reappraisal, they never fully went away. They were also all known and appreciated, on various levels, as actors. The same could never quite be said of Pamela Anderson.

Anderson was one of the defining sex symbols of the ‘90s, the platonic ideal of the hyper-real Playboy type that demanded bleach-blonde hair, razor-thin eyebrows, and large, preferably silicone-enhanced, assets. The media adored Pamela, but not as much as they hated her. It took us decades to acknowledge that, hey, maybe it was a massive violation against this woman to distribute her sex tape without her consent and revile her for it in the process. Anderson has undergone a major cultural reevaluation in recent years, one of many women screwed over in the past who has gotten a chance to set the record straight. Now, she's getting something she's never truly received before: critical acclaim for her acting craft.

Nobody else could have been the lead in Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, just like no one else would have packed the same punch as the protagonist of The Substance than Demi Moore. Anderson plays Shelley, the eponymous showgirl who has been part of the same sequins-and-feathers revue for 30 years. She's more a background figure than the spotlight star but she's survived decades in a cutthroat industry where not even the young and beautiful are spared. She’s living her dream, but then the show’s stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) announces that they’re closing down. 

Shelley is a woman experiencing future-shock. She talks wistfully about the good old days of the show’s peak, when it really meant something to be a Vegas showgirl. Her far younger colleagues are less dewy-eyed about being sexy dancers but Shelley sees Le Razzle Dazzle, the last standing showgirl performance on the Strip, as the bastion of a bygone era. It’s classy, not vulgar or grimy like the other shows that the girls find themselves auditioning for. 

Really, so much of Shelley feels like a figure of nostalgia. Her barely-there brows are the ‘90s represent. She listens to music on a walkman with over-the-head earphones. When one girl Kiernan Shipka) shows her audition moves for a more explicitly sexual dance show, Shelley is horrified by the sight. What could read as dumb feels warmly optimistic through Anderson’s performance. Shelley is fragile but determined, someone who followed her dream and doesn’t want to confront how said dream never loved her back. The other showgirls see it as a mere job (particularly the ever-welcome Brenda Song, who truly deserves more high-profile work) but it’s a calling for Shelley. She put aside mothering her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) for Le Razzle Dazzle. 

Anderson always had a peppy quality. She never seemed comfortable in outright bombshell roles, like the fun-but-stupid Barb Wire, where she basically plays Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca had he worn a leather bustier. On Baywatch, a show that never knowingly encouraged good acting, her CJ is forced to straddle that line between sporty free spirit and slow-mo running hot babe. It was in comedic roles where she got more room to breathe, although it’s hard to claim she ever got parts that required her to do much beyond riff on her well-worn image. The Last Showgirl isn’t diverging much from that formula but there are layers here that are not only beneficial to Anderson as a performer but just generally kind to her as a celebrity. 

This isn’t a film that mocks Shelley or that Anderson type. Vegas is built on the bodies and labour of women like her. Aside from our central showgirl, there is her friend Annette, played by Jamie Lee Curtis. A former member of the troupe, she now works as a cocktail waitress at a casino where the majority of her salary goes back into the slot machines. Curtis has a fake tan the shade of furniture varnish, thick make-up, and zero verbal filter. She lives life with a c’est la vie attitude that is quickly losing its potency, more so as her gambling losses begin to outweigh her wins. The cinematography by Autumn Durald Arkapaw (whose former credits include the last Black Panther movie) is hazy and glowing, like a perennial wave of heat that hammers home how inhospitable this carnival in the middle of the desert is to its residents. How does anyone survive in this place, even if they are young, hot, and desperate?

 

Anderson gets all the great moments but her fellow cast members ably support her. Dave Bautista, really the only man of importance in this film full of women, is especially good as the tender but emotionally stilted Eddie. He’s painfully aware that he’s the black sheep of the showgirls’ misfit family, its father figure but also the only one who is immune to the show’s closure since he’s not required to be naked or f*ckable to an audience of old men. Armed with one of the funniest wigs I’ve seen in years (think ‘90s Siegfried and Roy), Bautista feels as much like a yesteryear figure as Shelley, with whom he has a complicated past. It continues to be a joy to watch Bautista evolve into a reliable character actor. Make no mistake, that dude is going to be Oscar-nominated one day. 

The Last Showgirl is only 85 minutes long, and it could have used an extra 15, at least. There are moments, such as Shipka’s character’s personal struggles, that go nowhere, and moments that are intended to be emotionally gripping, like Hannah confronting Shelley over her choice of career over motherhood, cry out for some extra layers. I know everyone thinks movies are too long now, but when you’ve got a character this interesting and a performance so good, why not give both of them room to breathe? This is ultimately a very basic narrative, like The Wrestler but with feathers, and it needs those little details and idiosyncracies to shine. There are glimpses, like when Annette decides to dance in the casino for her own pleasure. 

The reason people will come to see The Last Showgirl is Pam, and rightly so. In an interview with Variety, Anderson said there was an upside to a lifetime of being underestimated. “Having nothing to live up to is a good position to be in. You can surprise everybody even with a full sentence. You’re a genius.” She certainly knows the perils and tedium of being viewed so frivolously. Will The Last Showgirl change that? I hope so. I want to see what else she can do. 

The Last Showgirl had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It currently does not have a US distributor (which is weird, someone pick it up already.)