Latest news with #ParisianLido
The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Last Showgirl review – Pamela Anderson gives performance of a lifetime in rhinestone-studded tale
A life spent in the service of dreams and fantasy collides with unforgiving reality: Pamela Anderson's veteran Vegas showgirl Shelly is forced to face a future that no longer has need of her 1,000-watt smile and glitter-smeared decolletage. The third feature from Palo Alto-director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia), The Last Showgirl is a wisp of a thing, clocking in at under 90 minutes and shot in just 18 days. The film's structure, more a series of vignettes than a linear narrative, feels like the fleeting reflections of a life captured in the facets of a mirror ball. It's initially tempting to dismiss the picture, like its central character with her breathy, little-girl voice, as superficial. But there's a bruising cumulative power to this melancholy little paean to an ending era. And Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor. Shelly has only ever been a showgirl; with well over 30 years of service under her garter belt, she is, by no small margin, the longest-serving cast member of Le Razzle Dazzle, an old school Vegas spectacle full of rhinestones, forced smiles and barely there costumes. The show is the last of its kind. It is, says Shelly firmly, a descendent of Parisian Lido culture. But Vegas punters, it seems, no longer have the appetite for showbiz cultural relics, even if they come dolled up in ostrich feathers and nipple tassels. Le Razzle Dazzle has already lost half of its weekly shows to an X-rated adult circus. And now comes the news, delivered by the socially maladroit stage manager Eddie (a lovely, low-key, sad-sack turn from Dave Bautista) that the casino's management has decided to close the show for good. For most of the girls, who view the gig as just another job that pays the rent, it's an annoyance. But for Shelly, whose whole identity is wrapped up in her status as a Razzle Dazzle showgirl, it's an existential emergency. With just two weeks to go before the show closes and uncertainty looming, Shelly weighs her options. Her age – she tries for 36, admits to 42 ('Distance helps,' she twitters) but in fact, she's 57 years old – counts against her. But she hauls herself on to the audition circuit anyway. Before we even see her at the film's opening, we hear her – heels clip-clopping purposefully as she strides on to a stage to try out for a jaded producer (Jason Schwartzman). The alternative is the route taken by her friend, former showgirl Annette (a terrific Jamie Lee Curtis, brassy, brusque and baked to a crisp by the desert sun), who now serves cocktails on the casino floor in an ill-fitting tailcoat and tights so shiny they make her legs look like clingfilm-wrapped ham. To complicate matters, Shelly is also struggling to rebuild a relationship with her semi-estranged adult daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), whose childhood she largely missed in order to pursue her dream of a stage career. It's tempting to draw parallels between Anderson's performance and that of Demi Moore in The Substance – both, after all, are characters whose worth to the entertainment industry has been linked to their youth and beauty, played by actors who had to deal with the same entrenched attitudes. But while Moore's prosthetics-wrestling, Grand Guignol gurning is a lot of fun, Anderson's is the more satisfying turn, a performance that speaks volumes in small details. There is an elegant pair of companion scenes – one early, one towards the end of the film – in which Shelly leaves voicemails for Hannah. The first is all fluttery panic, like a butterfly caught under glass; the second is sober, considered, each word weighted. There's a whole character arc just in these two messages. While as a piece of storytelling, it can feel flimsy, many of Coppola's directing choices are perceptive enough to add real depth to the picture. The score, by Andrew Wyatt, is lush, romantic and steeped in the kind of old Hollywood, Busby Berkeley nostalgia that shapes Shelly's self-image. And the rough-around-the-edges Super 16mm cinematography works particularly well: the shimmering, gauzy lens flare softens the strip malls and wasteland parking lots of daytime Vegas in the same way that the layers of sequin-dusted tulle bring a synthetic magic to the tired and tacky reality of Le Razzle Dazzle. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion In UK and Irish cinemas
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pamela Anderson is a dramatic revelation in the raw, honest The Last Showgirl
The first moments of The Last Showgirl hit like a static shock. We know the face that occupies its frames – shot tight, unnervingly tight – all too well. It belongs to Pamela Anderson, the pop culture behemoth and unfairly maligned bombshell who, in recent years, has wrested back the narrative through a stint in Chicago on Broadway, a paired autobiography and documentary, and a decision to go makeup free at public events. She's come into full ownership, now, of the power that was always hers, generated by that megawatt smile, in those hazy blue eyes and peroxide blonde curls. In Gia Coppola's portrait of an artist in the midst of identity collapse, though, Anderson's Shelly Gardner, a showgirl we first meet mid-audition, seems shockingly vulnerable. Her smile is a nervous twitch. Her eyes dart left and right. When an offscreen voice (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Coppola, who's the granddaughter of Francis Ford) asks Shelly her age, it's as if she's just been struck by the interrogator's spotlight. '36?' she whimpers. 'Sorry, I lied, I'm 42.' She's 57. 'Distance helps!' she jokes. It doesn't feel quite right to say The Last Showgirl is Anderson's comeback role. But it does feel significant – a way to memorialise, on film, the kind of career she's wanted to shape for herself, by playing a character who's less an echo of herself than an echo of what she's had to fight against. There is something raw and honest in all of Shelly's self-effacing giggles. Coppola's film doesn't just tackle the cruel dismissal of women who dare to age, but of every modern artist's deepest fear: that the day will come when the bottom falls out of their industry, leaving them with nothing to show for it but a lifetime of sacrifice. Shelly has been with the Vegas revue show Le Razzle Dazzle for three decades. Her younger colleagues, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), don't value their work beyond the paycheque. But Shelly feels immense pride in it and can barely sustain a conversation without alluding to its prestige origins as 'the last descendant of Parisian Lido culture'. So when the show's producer Eddie (Dave Bautista, proving he's at his best in quiet, soulful roles) announces its closure, it's accompanied by the drone sound of Shelly's entire universe imploding. Is she valiant or delusional? Coppola doesn't let us see much of Le Razzle Dazzle itself, and not until the very end, and Shelly's elegant descriptions are always combated by other people's dismissal of it as a 'stupid nudie show'. But all artists are delusional, to a degree, and Autumn Durald Arkapaw's grainy 16mm cinematography invites us to scrutinise faces and emotions while the borders around them – the stuff that makes up concrete reality – are largely a blur. At the heart of Kate Gersten's script lives a small found family living under less-than-ideal circumstances. Shelly's best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) insists she'll die in her cocktail waitress uniform; Jodie and Mary-Anne cling to Shelly and Eddie as unwilling parental figures, while Shelly's actual daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), remains detached and bitter under the belief her mother chose her career over her child. Coppola's previous films, Palo Alto (2013), about disaffected teenagers, and Mainstream (2020), about the lure of viral popularity, were similarly centred around people trapped in their own minor delusions. But the director shows great empathy for the pull of self-romanticisation, even when it wounds the dreamer. Shelly lingers around car parks and grimy rooftops, adorned in all her rhinestones and feathers. We're watching her write her own poetry. Dir: Gia Coppola. Starring: Pamela Anderson, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, Billie Lourd, Dave Bautista and Jamie Lee Curtis. 15, 89 minutes. 'The Last Showgirl' is in cinemas from 28 February
The Independent
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Pamela Anderson is a dramatic revelation in the raw, honest The Last Showgirl
The first moments of The Last Showgirl hit like a static shock. We know the face that occupies its frames – shot tight, unnervingly tight – all too well. It belongs to Pamela Anderson, the pop culture behemoth and unfairly maligned bombshell who, in recent years, has wrested back the narrative through a stint in Chicago on Broadway, a paired autobiography and documentary, and a decision to go makeup free at public events. She's come into full ownership, now, of the power that was always hers, generated by that megawatt smile, in those hazy blue eyes and peroxide blonde curls. In Gia Coppola's portrait of an artist in the midst of identity collapse, though, Anderson's Shelly Gardner, a showgirl we first meet mid-audition, seems shockingly vulnerable. Her smile is a nervous twitch. Her eyes dart left and right. When an offscreen voice (Jason Schwartzman, cousin to Coppola, who's the granddaughter of Francis Ford) asks Shelly her age, it's as if she's just been struck by the interrogator's spotlight. '36?' she whimpers. 'Sorry, I lied, I'm 42.' She's 57. 'Distance helps!' she jokes. It doesn't feel quite right to say The Last Showgirl is Anderson's comeback role. But it does feel significant – a way to memorialise, on film, the kind of career she's wanted to shape for herself, by playing a character who's less an echo of herself than an echo of what she's had to fight against. There is something raw and honest in all of Shelly's self-effacing giggles. Coppola's film doesn't just tackle the cruel dismissal of women who dare to age, but of every modern artist's deepest fear: that the day will come when the bottom falls out of their industry, leaving them with nothing to show for it but a lifetime of sacrifice. Shelly has been with the Vegas revue show Le Razzle Dazzle for three decades. Her younger colleagues, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), don't value their work beyond the paycheque. But Shelly feels immense pride in it and can barely sustain a conversation without alluding to its prestige origins as 'the last descendant of Parisian Lido culture'. So when the show's producer Eddie (Dave Bautista, proving he's at his best in quiet, soulful roles) announces its closure, it's accompanied by the drone sound of Shelly's entire universe imploding. Is she valiant or delusional? Coppola doesn't let us see much of Le Razzle Dazzle itself, and not until the very end, and Shelly's elegant descriptions are always combated by other people's dismissal of it as a 'stupid nudie show'. But all artists are delusional, to a degree, and Autumn Durald Arkapaw's grainy 16mm cinematography invites us to scrutinise faces and emotions while the borders around them – the stuff that makes up concrete reality – are largely a blur. At the heart of Kate Gersten's script lives a small found family living under less-than-ideal circumstances. Shelly's best friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) insists she'll die in her cocktail waitress uniform; Jodie and Mary-Anne cling to Shelly and Eddie as unwilling parental figures, while Shelly's actual daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), remains detached and bitter under the belief her mother chose her career over her child. Coppola's previous films, Palo Alto (2013), about disaffected teenagers, and Mainstream (2020), about the lure of viral popularity, were similarly centred around people trapped in their own minor delusions. But the director shows great empathy for the pull of self-romanticisation, even when it wounds the dreamer. Shelly lingers around car parks and grimy rooftops, adorned in all her rhinestones and feathers. We're watching her write her own poetry. Dir: Gia Coppola. Starring: Pamela Anderson, Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song, Billie Lourd, Dave Bautista and Jamie Lee Curtis. 15, 89 minutes.
