Pamela Anderson stars as the titular character of “last showgirl”: bejewelled and believable as the last remaining performer in a dying Las Vegas cabaret—the deplorably named “Le Razzle Dazzle.”
She plays Shelly, a woman who looks strikingly like the Pamela Anderson of our world, but (if allowed to say) aged. As the oldest dancer at the decaying club, Anderson’s Shelly is surrounded by 19-year-olds, who have few fucks to give about its impending closure.
Shelly is 34, she says—well, 42—well, actually, 57—and so, she finds herself with no clear path post-revue. Jamie Lee Curtis’s Annette represents Shelly’s potentially dismal future: a former showgirl from Shelly’s cohort, now working as a demeaned cocktail waitress by day and sleeping in her car by night.
In both title and protagonist, the film is strangely reminiscent of the beloved children’s animated fantasy The Last Unicorn (1982). Anderson’s soft, girly voice and heavily lashed eyes draw easy comparison to the Unicorn—the last of her kind, with all of her contemporaries having been herded to the end of the Earth by an evil entity.
Here, the evil entity is the rise of a new competing club: an X-rated circus that Shelly cannot bear as her quaint beliefs in the “magic” and the “Frenchness” of cabaret unable to withstand the harsh reality of the explicit.
However, the reality Shelly finds herself avoiding the most is that of her neglected, grown-up daughter (Billie Lourd). We’re used to the ambitious, career-driven, distant mother archetype—however, rarely in this career: dancing in rhinestones on stage. A cutthroat businesswoman balancing her sleek CEO title with her boisterous boys at home? No. Pamela Anderson leaving her baby daughter alone in a parking lot while she races to entertain the crowds à la Razzle Dazzle.
The film deftly addresses the narrative of Mother as saint and saviour. It remains genuinely countercultural to be ambivalent as a mother, and Shelly’s consistent rejection of the maternal titles placed on her by others is refreshing and moving to behold. There is occasionally some atrocious exposition—her daughter literally saying, “You are so lucky that when Lisa saw me in the car, she didn’t turn me in to social services.” We get it!
Regardless, the emotion evoked overall is unbelievable. Across several scenes, the film is genuinely heart-wrenching to watch. Shelly receives kick after kick from the economic landscape, neglected daughters, and disinterested bosses—that is, again, pesky reality. It’s a testament to Anderson’s capacity to generate pathos, that not once do you wish for her to ever have to face it. She is a woman who has quilted herself in cotton wool: the safety of her dreams, never wholly realised and—truthfully—never really going to be.
Image by Booth Kates from Pixabay