By Marc S. Sanders
I dunno. Maybe we grow up twice in our lifetime.
Growing up is hard to do. As a kid I loved playing with all my Star Wars, He-Man and GI Joe toys. Now that I’m in my 50s, I see pictures of those toys online that are long gone, and I tell my wife how I wish I could escape back into that comfortable universe of limitless imagination. Often, I miss being a child.
Beyond a boring desk job, as an adult I’ve moved on to acting to maintain my sanity, now going on close to 35 years. Only, I do not memorize lines as well as I used to and there are fewer roles for an over middle-aged guy. I miss many of my favorite parts that I portrayed on stage in my earlier decades. I direct more often now, staying off the stage, and I guide actors to a point where I imagine how I would have portrayed the role.
Leaving these periods of my past behind is hard to accept and as I watched Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl, I could deeply relate to the anguish felt by Shelly (Pamela Anderson, in a gut-wrenching performance). I believe anything we are good at, or that we have complete self confidence in is hardest when we are stripped of our talents. Arthritis can mar a concert pianist, a unreliable memory can weaken an actor, bad knees can curse an athlete, and for Shelly who has been a Las Vegas showgirl for over thirty years, aging is working against her preservation. Even worse is knowing that your performance niche carries no interest with audiences any longer. Shelly’s show is being closed down in two weeks and an updated high-flying circus will occupy the venue.
Coppola’s present day film appears to be shot on an 80’s camcorder. The colors and sparkles of Vegas entertainment are glitzy only from the costume wear of Shelly and her fellow performers. Otherwise, the cinematography is as colorless and burned out as an old home movie.
Jamie Lee Curtis is unrecognizable at first. She plays Annette who is casino cocktail waitress and out of the showgirl business for a number of years now. He complexion is craggily and overly tan. Her hair is damaged, likely from years of hairspray treatments. Her makeup is overdone in deep blue mascara and rouge. She’s probably thirty pounds heavier and this has aged her out of her dancing career. This is hard. She’s a friend to Shelly, but she’s deeply mad at her newfound reality that will never match what she once was. Total Eclipse Of The Heart could not be a more appropriate needle drop during a crushing scene among the slot machines of a busy casino.
Pamela Anderson plays Shelly as innocently naive and sweet to the younger performers (Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka) who still have the youthful looks that will grant them opportunities after their show closes. Shelly is affectionate and attendant to the younger girls’ insecurities. She’s a maternal hen the young ladies pay attention to. On the other hand, Shelly no longer looks like a blond babe who came out of the TV show Baywatch. That is why casting Pamela Anderson in this role is so smart. The actor ran the beaches in bathing suits while being an 80s rocker tag along with the drummer from Motley Crue. Now she’s in her 60s and must adjust her talents and physical assets of wrinkles and crow’s feet to portray a lost soul like Shelly, a girl thrust into an immediate future of no purpose, no need and a lot less hope. Who can Shelly turn to when her insecurity attacks?
Anderson is definitely up to the task of this role. Her squeaky voice with a detectable girly lisp fights to uphold an optimistic extrovert. This girl must have been a Marilyn Monroe of this industry at one point. Inside though, Shelly is in terrifying pain and Coppola’s script allows for several different scenes where her fear explodes organically. One time it’s on a date with her stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista, looking like a muscle head that you’d find in Vegas, but not in a showy superhero movie). Later, Shelly has to pour her regrets out to her estranged college age daughter (Billie Lourd) who resents being placed below a risqué cheesy showgirl act while she was growing up.
The most heartbreaking moment occurs when Shelly auditions with an unnatural and unsure toothy smile to become club dancer. The director is unsubtle and apathetic at deteriorating whatever Shelly has left to grasp. Finally, Shelly the former, lovable showgirl must release the pain of her new reality that she’s been stabbed with. Within a career mostly highlighted with buxom beach running and bathing suit footage, Pamela Anderson delivers her best dramatic scene anyone will ever encounter from her. This is not just some cheapo dancer draped in stiletto heels, feathers and plastic bling with gigantic headdresses to balance. This is a real person who has become extinct of her normalcy. She could’ve performed elsewhere, but she’s three decades older now and on the surface, to the superficial folk of the nightlife scene, she’s not the T & A that people desire anymore.
The Last Showgirl explores the challenges of transition. Change confronts all of us eventually. We get older and maybe less healthier. We are not as flexible and we move slower. We become less intuitive and analytical too. We also become displaced and replaced.
Gia Coppola’s film, written with touching sensitivity by Kate Gersten, opted to follow a career that hinges primarily on aesthetics, but also on a culture that has outlived its shelf life. Glitz and blingy glamour are not what’s sought after anymore. Las Vegas has partly become a tourist attraction on a level of amusement park scale with nifty rides, concerts and family fare like circuses. Shelly and Annette no longer fit in this newer design. Yet they are not cars or buildings you demolish and replace. These women have lives that were never prepared to be spit out and discarded.
The Last Showgirl shows a harsh reality. The performances from its cast of current younger generations to the older material carried by Bautista, Curtis and especially Pamela Anderson are grounded in a range of reactionary authenticity. Change arrives for each of these people. Yet, the effects run a spectrum of differing perspectives, and the most hopeless and complex circumstance is delivered affectionately by a surprising Pamela Anderson in a heartbreaking performance. Her work is so well done in this film.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 