Cert - 15

Run-time - 1 hour 28 minutes

Director - Gia Coppola

Shelley (Pamela Anderson) has been a Las Vegas showgirl her whole adult life, when her show gets a closure notice the life she left behind, and her family, begins to catch up with her.

It seems there are four groups of people when it comes to Pamela Anderson. Those who know her for Baywatch, those who know her for Borat, those who know her for what Pam And Tommy was about and those who don't know her at all. In The Last Showgirl she delivers a revelatory performance which will hopefully lead to more offers and dramatic roles in the future.

Without her hopefully career-changing turn, The Last Showgirl perhaps wouldn't have the same strength or hit as we see Las Vegas Showgirl Shelley coming to terms with the imminent closure of Le Razzle Dazzle, a last-of-its-kind show which she's spent all her adult life performing in. However, with the closure the life she left behind, including now-adult daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) begins to catch up with her, alongside her age being just one factor in being unlikely to get further work performing on the strip.

Vegas is made to seem like a dried-up, deserted landscape, one holding the hopes and dreams of a long-gone era. The look and feel of the buildings calls back to Sean Baker's The Florida Project - the bright purple motel next door to Disneyworld - Baker receives a special thanks in the credits. Shelley tries to work out what she can do now her life performing seems to be over. Auditions don't go well, she could become a casino waitress like her friend Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis) - who performs an almost tragic dance to a nearly empty casino full of passersby ignoring her - but her calling still says that she's born to be on the stage, it's what she set out to spend her whole life doing in tasteful shows, not like the modern nude circus which is taking over the theatre she performs in to sell-out crowds.

Much of The Last Showgirl is a character piece for Shelley, led by her emotions rather than a full narrative. And Anderson sells that brilliantly as she fully invests herself in a character whose life was put to one side in exchange for her dreams and now is facing the effects of that. Desperation begins to come in as she continues to represent shows of another era, "I'm not old, I'm older" she tells the younger performers (led by Brenda Song and Kiernan Shipka) around her early on.

The character study which plays out comes together to make for an interesting drama that without its leads performance would perhaps feel much more middle-of-the-road or familiar. There are familiar moments here and there and sometimes scenes which feel on the slow side, but at just 88-minutes The Last Showgirl keeps its ideas generally concise and moves forward with the developments, regrets and admissions of its central figure as everything appears to suddenly hit her at once.

Four stars