What happens in Vegas can break your heart

Pamela Anderson reinvents herself in ‘The Last Showgirl’

The 2023 Netflix documentary “Pamela, A Love Story” showed viewers the real Pamela Anderson, the shy, smart, wounded real person behind the sex symbol image splashed on Maxim magazine covers and “Baywatch” promos in the ‘90s.

Gia Coppola’s “The Last Showgirl” cleverly draws from both that real person we don’t know, and that persona we know so well. In playing Shelley, a famous Las Vegas showgirl for whom the spotlight has almost entirely faded, Anderson is a revelation – flinty, funny and poignant. I can’t think of any actress who could have played it so well, so thoroughly understood what it must be like to spend your entire life being looked at, and the complicated feelings that emerge when the gaze goes away.

Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 bomb “Showgirls” has cemented a certain view of the feathers-and-rhinestone life in the culture, as a dog-eat-dog world where dancers prey on each other and controlling men prey on everyone. Coppola and screenwriter Jane Gersten seem determined to make their movie the anti-”Showgirls.”

At the Razzle Dazzle, the Vegas show that Shelley has starred in for decades, the women seem mutually supportive backstage, with Shelley acting as sort of a den mother for younger dancers like Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song). Even the show’s director, Eddie, who would be a manipulative sleazeball in another movie, is soft-spoken and caring of his dancers, in a lovely performance by Dave Bautista.

But the new Vegas has largely passed the Razzle Dazzle by, and the audiences has gotten smaller and smaller, lured by fresher, sexier shows elsewhere on the Strip. Shelley sees those shows as “low-class” compared to hers, which she describes as being in “the Parisian style.” But even the younger dancers find the Razzle Dazzle a little corny.

Finally, the hammer comes down, and Eddie announces that the Razzle Dazzle will end for good in two weeks. Facing an uncertain future, Shelley is forced to reckon with the choices she has made, including choosing the spotlight over her estranged daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd).

“The Last Showgirl” was clearly built around Anderson, and such star vehicles are usually an opportunity for an underappreciated actor to show off her dramatic chops. Which she does, as Shelley’s delusions about her life start to crumble, and Anderson expertly plays her rage and disappointment, and growing awareness that she may have devoted her life to the wrong things.

But Anderson is also a very funny and agile actor, and “Showgirl” makes good use of her energy and comedic timing. Gersten, who previously was a writer on comedy shows like “The Good Place” and “Schmigadoon!” gives her some great lines, as when Shelley muses on why she turned down a chance to join the Rockettes. “I found all the kicking very redundant.”

Coppola foregrounds her performance against a gauzy, dreamlike Las Vegas, with lingering shots in natural light of Shelley ruminating with the desert city in the daytime as a backdrop. It’s a different, more honest way of looking at Las Vegas than we usually see in movies, and “The Last Showgirl” gives us a very different way of clearly seeing Pamela Anderson.

“The Last Showgirl” is now in theaters. In Madison, it’s playing at AMC Fitchburg 18.