Every once in a while, a role seems so intrinsically tied to the public perception of its star that the lead performance will literally feel like the part they were born to play. The Last Showgirl, directed by Gia Coppola, has crafted such a character for Pamela Anderson.

It feels odd to say that one of my most anticipated films playing TIFF is a Pamela Anderson flick. You know, the star of Baywatch, Barb Wire and the most Playboy covers of all time. That Pamela Anderson. 

In The Last Showgirl, she plays Shelley, an aging Vegas performer who finds out that Le Razzle Dazzle, the revue she has starred in for over thirty years, is set to shutter. She’s now in her fifties, hasn’t had any work experience other than being nearly nude, doing basic choreography and wearing beautiful over-the-top costumes. What’s a woman like her to do when she is forced to contend with the reality of aging and the changing landscape of what constitutes entertainment on the Vegas strip?

Also in the show are her surrogate daughters Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Marianne (Brenda Song), who look to Shelley for inspiration as well  protection. Dave Bautista plays Eddie, the show’s manager who has a past with Shelley, while Jamie Lee Curtis plays Annette, a friend and former showgirl turned cocktail waitress with a gambling problem.

The film, much like fellow TIFF selection The Substance, looks at beauty standards for women who are aging. Anderson has mostly stayed out of the spotlight in recent years, in part because Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with her. Other than a cameo in the recent Baywatch movie, hasn’t appeared in something substantial in close to 20 years. She went from being the pinnacle of beauty in the ’90’ and early ’00s to being completely off the radar–something that parallels Shelley’s own reckoning with sexism in entertainment after being lauded for her beauty and really not taken seriously as a performer.

The film itself ultimately sets up plenty of great moments but fails to capitalize on them or delve any deeper. We get a heart-breaking scene after Shelley’s estranged adult daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) finally watches Le Razzle Dazzle and confronts her mother for never being around just to prance around in a tacky show. This utterly crushes Shelley as she already was conflicted between following a career she loved with trying to raise a child in a field that isn’t compatible with child rearing. But then the scene leads to a quick falling out between Shelley and Jodie that is cleaned up a little too quickly.

Dave Bautista gives a tender (and incredibly slimmed down) performance as someone who previously dated Annette and has history with Shelley. He’s awkward and charming while trying to project confidence with his dragon encrusted bowling shirts and chunky rings. He seems wasted as his big scene with Anderson, in which we get a revelation about their past, is mostly boiled down to Shelley yelling at Eddie and storming out before their story could be fleshed out any more. 

Manwhile, Jamie Lee Curtis is so believable as a Vegas veteran, a woman who used to be on the top of the world who now smokes too much, tans too often and applies a hideous shade of silver lipstick. Even as a cocktail waitress she doesn’t get respect, having her shifts cut in favour of the younger and prettier servers. She steals every scene she is in showing why her recent resurgence and Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All At Once was so well deserved.

The film is gorgeously shot, showing us the mundane character of everyday life in Las Vegas during the daytime, a side we rarely get that makes the city look both lonely and having a unique charm that the glitz and glam covers up, which finds echoes in Anderson’s performance. The film truly is a career high for Anderson, has to face the fact of aging in a world that treats women, even the most beautiful ones in the room, as disposable. The film sets up a story of her deciding what to do next with her life, but ultimately other than being discarded by the town, we don’t get a sense of what might actually be next for her. 

Gia Coppola has a real eye for capturing true beauty, but The Last Showgilr suffers from unfulfilled ideas within the promising script by Kate Gersten. The Last Showgirl could have been a classic film in the vein of The Wrestler and Sunset Boulevard where the extra textual layers make the movie all the more fascinating leading to a potential Oscar nomination for Anderson. It falls a bit short, but Anderson delivers.

The Last Showgirl screened as part of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Get more That Shelf TIFF coverage here.