
Pamela Anderson’s lived-in, wistful and sometimes heartbreaking performance as a veteran dancer in a Vegas spectacular is the standout in the otherwise fairly pedestrian production of Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl (C). The long-running “Razzle Dazzle” show is closing after years on The Strip, which means the protagonist must tie up lots of loose ends with characters played by Dave Bautista as the show coordinator, Jamie Lee Curtis as a friend and cocktail waitress and Billie Lourd as an estranged daughter. Anderson’s character has let the lure of beads and feather boas and life on the wicked stage eclipse her sense of direction, but she often proves the emotional center of a ragtag surrogate family. The screenplay doesn’t give others in the ensemble a whole lot to do, which stunts the story’s momentum. Coppola intermingles the backstage and apartment domestic drama with sun-drenched montages of the film’s women interspersed with Sin City’s decaying landmarks, giving the film an occasional veneer of indie aesthetic; but she doesn’t land much of a thesis about what viewers should surmise from the experience of her characters in transition. Many events unfold predictably, and only Anderson’s elegiac and often moving performance survives as a strong takeaway.