Then as we flash back to just before Shelly finds out the show is to end, we meet her chosen family: Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song are like her surrogate daughters in the dance production; while Jamie Lee Curtis is the spunky, one-liner-spilling ex member of the troupe, who now works as a cocktail waitress.
You might have been surprised to see Pamela Anderson in a starring role for The Last Showgirl, the Gia Coppola movie which debuted last year at Toronto Film Festival.
Contrary to the managers’ and other dancers' view of the show as crass and outdated, Shelly says the show makes her “feel so seen,” she loves being “bathed in the light, night after night.”.
Gia Coppola hounded Anderson to take on this role (not taking ‘no’ as an answer after approaching her agent, and then chasing after her son Brandon Thomas Lee to secure her instead), and she was definitely right to think it was made for her.
And the use of 16mm film makes for a softly lensed but sparkling portrait of a hard-up real-life community — the production feels sensitively handled, finding beauty in a scene that could have been looked at through a voyeuristic lens.
