2024 may go down as the Year of the Older Woman in movies. Out of the ten Golden Globe Awards-nominated lead actresses, eight of them are 50+ playing mature females, including Angelina Jolie, Tilda Swinton, and Nicole Kidman.
Now comes 57-year-old model, sex symbol, reality star, diva punchline Pamela Anderson (sans makeup) in a performance of a lifetime (not that there was much competition with her other roles such as "Baywatch" or the lousy "BarbWire") in director Gia Coppola's (Francis Ford's granddaughter) "The Last Showgirl," distributed by Roadside Attractions.
The film bears a passing similarity to the exceptional "Anora" about the pitfalls of being a showgirl, even a younger one, but especially "The Substance" concerning an older performer fired from her job because she's too old, using a black-market experimental drug to create a younger version of herself. Sexism and ageism bind these two films together, with Anderson and Demi Moore — resurrected Hollywood has-beens —duking it out this awards season.
Razzle, frazzled
Shelly (Anderson) is a veteran tits and ass dancer in a gaudy, glitzy Las Vegas revue called "Le Razzle Dazzle" that is closing in two weeks after 38 years, due to declining audiences (down to 15 per show). Shelly has performed in the show for more than 30 years, originally starring as the headliner in this splashy, feathered, sequined, rhinestone headpieces, stiletto heels, and topless spectacle once a Vegas institution, but now a dinosaur.
Shelly has long been relegated to the back of the chorus line with much younger women kicking up front. Shelly is devastated at the news, fearing at her age it's probably a career-ender, but has no idea what her future holds. She has an unrealistic, illusory spin on the show which she sees as legendary in the mold of the grand 19th-century Parisian Moulin Rouge. But now more crude explicit entertainment like "The Dirty Circus" is popular, making "Le Razzle Dazzle" seem old-fashioned.
"I feel so good about myself in the show with all the costumes, the set, being bathed in that light, night after night. Feeling seen, feeling beautiful. I can't imagine my life without it," she muses. She acts as the mother hen to two younger dancers, Jodie and Mary-Anne, but is so self-absorbed in her own miasma, that when they come to her with problems, the unmaternal Shelly shoos them away.
Backstage
Shelly's friendly with gruffy stage manager Eddie (an excellent Dave Bautista) with whom she has a history. Her bestie is Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former Razzle performer, who, seeing the light, left and became a cocktail waitress at a casino. She drinks too much and gambles away her paycheck to the point of being evicted from her apartment.
Then there's her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher's daughter), the product of a passing fling. But Shelly so consumed with her career, left Hannah with the family of a close friend to raise her. They haven't seen each other in a year and Hannah now a college student pursuing photography, reappears, not ever having seen "Razzle." Hannah is bitter and resentful, bearing a grudge against Shelly for ignoring her parental duties, with Shelly clueless why Hannah is so unhappy with her.
In the best scene, Shelly auditions for The Dirty Circus, lying about her age. When rejected by the casting director, she screams in desperation, "What are you looking for?" only to confirm her worst suspicions, that he wants a younger woman, who can actually dance. However, Shelly, at an impasse, is fighting not to become invisible.
The fading star faced with limited options is a Hollywood oft-told staple going back to the 1920s. And honestly, this film doesn't bring anything new to the table, except the perspective of a disillusioned striptease dancer. The script is problematic because while it is character-driven, the only character well drawn is Shelly.
We learn virtually nothing about the other dancers, so Shelly's interaction with them feels hollow. We discover the identity of Hannah's father, but the reveal is hardly a shocker. While the lonely Eddie and the smiley but self-destructive Annette elicit some sympathies, even they are aren't developed enough into full-fledged three-dimensional human beings, rather than caricatures.
Monroe-esque
What makes the film worthwhile is Anderson's performance. It feels as if it's the culmination of her career, that everything she's done in the past or happened in her tabloid personal life, has prepared her for this watershed role. She exudes a wounded vulnerability similar to Marilyn Monroe's Sugar in "Some Like It Hot" that grabs you from her first screen appearance.
There's not a phony note in what is basically an unlikable, scattered, confused protagonist yet Anderson makes you care about her fate. She's receiving deserved Oscar buzz, having already been nominated for Golden Globe and Screen Actor Guild awards. The fact audiences will question whether Shelly really believes she's an endangered artist or it's a way to protect herself from the harsh reality of her imminent extinction, displays how well Anderson has thought through Shelly's indignities and incongruities.
The barely recognizable Curtis, in the midst of a career renaissance, certainly makes the most out of her few scene-stealing segments, though some might accuse her of overacting. Her orange bronze facial makeup bears an eerie unpalatable resemblance to our President-elect. Her finest moment, dancing to Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on a table top with casino attendees ignoring her, is heartbreaking but persists far too long to make its point.
"The Last Showgirl" doesn't provide any resolution for Shelly other than that's she a survivor. There's no cliché ninth-hour Hollywood self-revelatory transformation. It's a small, sad, somber story, though Coppola makes the right choice to make seductive Las Vegas into a character, albeit a cruel one.
The only razzle dazzle here is Anderson, but she's a stellar inducement to watch this entertaining hodgepodge cautionary tale of a desperate woman faced with the unfair brutal realization that sexiness and meager talent does indeed have an expiration date.
'The Last Showgirl' plays now at Landmark's Opera Plaza Cinema and the Presidio Movie Theater www.roadsideattractions.com
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