THE LAST SHOWGIRL

Francis Ford Coppola brought us, among other things, the Godfather trilogy, one of cinema’s greatest achievement. Now his granddaughter Gia Coppola, hits the limelight with this near-documentary-style drama about Shelley, an ageing Las Vegas showgirl, played by Pamela Anderson in a raw and searing performance. The revue she is in, styled on Paris’s Moulin Rouge –all ‘tits and ass’ as it was memorably described in A Chorus Line – is pretty tame by today’s standards and earmarked for closure.

Shelley tries and fails to reconnect with her semi-estranged daughter (Billie Lourd) and her stage-manager ex-boyfriend (Dave Bautista) At 57, with no other skills, she faces a future of waiting tables and serving cocktails. Jamie Lee Curtis has a star cameo as exactly that, an ex-showgirl cocktail waitress. Curtis steals the movie with a show-stopping solo dance number that reminded me of Gwen Verdon’s heart-rending routines in the original stage version of Sweet Charity.

Despite great acting and moody cinema-tography, The Last Showgirl feels a little flat. The story is too slight and Anderson is the only character given enough development. And there’s too long a wait to see Anderson’s show routine, which is pitch perfect, with a few sad echoes of a tired old drag queen.