WFF24|The Last Showgirl - Pamela Anderson's Performance of a Lifetime

By the time I got to see The Last Showgirl, the opening night film at the Whistler Film Festival, it had already received a lot of buzz. Being a child of the 80's, Pamela Anderson was a permanent pop-culture fixture through my formative years. From Baywatch, to Barb Wire, to all the nonsense surrounding her relationship with Tommy Lee, I witnessed her career firsthand. Being a closeted gay kid in Northern Canada, I didn't have the same schoolboy crush on her like so many of my classmates. I pretended I did, but really I was just trying to make sure I fit in and maintained my cover as a normal straight teenager who definitely wanted to talk about this sex icon with all my friends. This ruse gave me a bit of a different perspective on Anderson as an actor.

When my friend invited me over to watch Barb Wire in his basement while his parents weren't home, he was hoping to see as much of Anderson's performance as he could, if you know what I mean… I remember seeing that film and feeling the trap that Pamela Anderson was caught in for the majority of her career. Her desire to be taken seriously, and to be respected for her acting, but instead constantly being objectified and used purely for her blonde bombshell looks. In the late 90s, Pamela Anderson was a modern day Marilyn Monroe. Her star had risen to icon status and there was no possible way to separate the person from the icon. Looking back, I deeply identify with the pop-culture cage she was trapped in.

While she was trying to break into more character-driven roles so she could be recognised for the talents she had honed over the years, society wanted to keep her firmly in the role they had cast her as - ditsy blonde sex object. It must have been a lot like how it feels to grow up in the closet. When you're trapped like that, all you want to do is break out of your society imposed prison and express yourself, but you can't. The thing I always admired about Pamela Anderson was that she kept trying. At least until she decided to take a step back from acting and retreat to her home on Vancouver Island.

There was Pamela's Garden of Eden on HGTV, and of course the unauthorised Hulu series Pam & Tommy that have kept Anderson's profile in the zeitgeist, but for the last decade or more she has been happy to stay out of the limelight. With her return in The Last Showgirl, the reaction to her performance, and indeed to her career has shifted. She's finally being recognised for the talent that's been behind her iconic status all along.

In The Last Showgirl, Anderson plays Shelley, an aging Vegas showgirl in the twilight of her career. The show she's been performing in since the 80s, Le Razzle Dazzle, a relic of the Las Vegas of old, is slated to be shut down. The film is from director Gia Coppola, and it features a very gritty, in-your-face style of cinematography with a lot of handheld work, and deep fascination with soft focus. All of that may make the film sound like self-serious, arty, and pretentious, but in actuality it's far from it. The screenplay by Kate Gersten is genuinely funny and keeps the tone of the movie very accessible. The performances of the entire cast are on point, but especially those by Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista.

Curtis plays Annette, a gambling addicted cocktail waitress who is well past her prime but can't give up the work because she's constantly gambling it away. Bautista hands in a surprisingly tender performance as Eddie, the stage manager at Le Razzle Dazzle. Strong turns from Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, and Billie Lourde round out the cast and fill the world of this Vegas gig economy with believable and interesting characters.

Despite the strong acting, the film does drag at times when Gersten's screenplay gets away from the snappy show scenes that include the whole gang, and into the more pensive moments where Shelley is forced to face the choices she made along the way to remain a showgirl. The story explores Shelley's relationship with her somewhat estranged daughter, Hannah. The reveal of Hannah being Shelley's daughter is held back, although the audience can see it coming a mile away. And while the relationship does pay off with a powerful moment after Hannah sees her mother's show for the first time, I can't help but feel this dynamic wasn't mined for its full potential.

I couldn't help but feel like this was a female version of 2008's The Wrestler by Darren Arronofsky - a film I love, and so I'm not necessarily bothered by this. However, one of the things that made The Wrestler so great was its fresh, departure-from-template feeling. Still Anderson's performance as Shelley reaches its full potential near the end of the film when Shelley is forced to audition for a new show for the first time in decades. The scene following the disastrous audition (featuring a specular cameo from Jason Schwartzman), is where Anderson's performance goes from outstanding, to truly great. You can feel all of the weight and heft of a life in show business come through here. Not just in terms of the character, but also from the real life that's behind the performance. Pamela Anderson, the onetime peak of what it meant to be a sex-symbol superstar finally breaks the chains that have held her firmly in place as a beautiful, but not serious performer, into a full blown character actor at the top of her powers. In a film where the acting is Oscar-callibur across the board, Anderson manages to anchor the show and totally embody Shelley.

Seeing this film as part of the Whistler Film Festival added yet another layer to the triumph this is for Anderson. She's a West Coast Canadian through and through, and this was the Western Canadian premiere of the film. While she couldn't attend in person, she did send a video message that played before the film. In it, she thanked the audience for their love and support, saying that she's feeling it, but that it's a new experience for her. My inner teenage self couldn't help but be truly happy for her. She's being seen for the parts of herself that she's always wished people would acknowledge. Is there anything greater in life than being able to express yourself and be seen for who you really are? I don't think so.