Pamela Anderson might have been publicly opposed to the making of Pam & Tommy, Hulu’s glossy retelling of the theft of a private videotape from her home, but its impact has been undeniably fortuitous. In reframing the narrative more sympathetically around that episode, the show can be at least partially credited for a fully-fledged Anderson renaissance. Since its release, Anderson has stepped out on the Broadway stage as Chicago’s Roxie Hart, released a Netflix documentary, an autobiography, a cooking show, is prised to take part in a roster of new movies including the upcoming Naked Gun reboot, and now, The Last Showgirl, a spirited indie from director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis Ford), placing Anderson centre-stage.

The film tells the tale of Shelly, a Las Vegas showgirl whose show, Le Razzle Dazzle, the last remaining traditional floor show in Las Vegas, abruptly ends after a 30-year run. Faced with sudden unemployment in her fifties and a skillset involving little more than dancing embellished with sequins and feathers, Shelley is forced to seek other ways to make ends meet. The film has a palpably respectful view of the showgirl profession – Shelly is deeply connected to the role having devoted thirty years of her life to it. “Las Vegas used to treat us like movie stars,” she says, “we were ambassadors for style and grace.” It’s refreshing to see it portrayed from this angle, the film skilfully showcasing the complexities of ageing in a profession dependent on looks – something Anderson knows all too well.

It’s why she often feels perfectly cast, embodying every inch of this character, a woman clinging to the dignity of her life’s work as the world insists its no longer valuable. Coppola films Shelly’s final performances with an intimacy that feels almost intrusive. Her camera lingers in close-up, not on the show-stopping glamour of rhinestones and bright lights, but on Shelly’s pained, complicated smiles as the curtain rises. For all its flash and sparkle, The Last Showgirl is a quiet film, a portrait of ageing and irrelevance in an industry that thrives on youth and beauty. It’s impossible not to see the parallels to Anderson’s own history – a woman scrutinized, commodified, and discarded by the same culture that once worshipped her. Her performance aches with the weight of that lived experience, making Shelly a character at once deeply personal and utterly universal.

The film’s core strength is clearly its ensemble, and Coppola plays up to this, allowing Shelly’s troupe of showgirls – a multigenerational collective – plenty of airtime together. From Brenda Strong to Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka proving her mettle as a child-star done good, the team are endlessly caring of each other. Jamie Lee Curtis has several scene-stealing moments as Annette, the eldest of the troupe, donning different wigs and belting out “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with a mix of bravado and heartbreak that suggests a degree of distress behind the façade. Male cast members are thin on the ground, with Dave Bautista notably offering moments of surprising tenderness as a melancholic club manager – but this is very much a female depiction of this profession, with a female cast, writing and directing team, and is the better for it.

Throughout, the film makes admirable efforts to be more of a Sean Baker movie, channelling elements of his films’ gritty, sun-drenched realism, even sporting a similar colour palette to The Florida Project. Whilst it never reaches those heights and occasionally feels under-developed, some ideas left unexplored, the film is buoyed along by its dreamlike, indie feel and its expertly selected casting. Primarily, what carries the film is Anderson herself, and there remains something about her that’s unflappably likeable. Perhaps it’s the degree of goodwill we’re willing to afford her after her very public bouts with an unforgiving press over the decades – a real-life history that makes her ideal for the role of a weatherbeaten showgirl – but she’s paradoxically, endlessly watchable. At the Picturehouse Central Q&A, she took to the stage with such a degree of warmth and humility, speaking with effusive generosity of her fellow female cast members and championing them to the hilt – and maybe that means so much to her because she spent so long grappling with a world that had no interest in championing women whatsoever, flattening them into caricatures and blithely participating in their destruction. “This is the real start of my career,” she says. And perhaps it is.

The Last Showgirl is not perfect – it doesn’t have the bruised brilliance of The Wrestler, for example – but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a film that lives and dies on the strength of its performances, and Anderson’s is magnetic. If nothing else, it’s a thoughtful meditation on age, beauty, and the sacrifices demanded by a life in the spotlight. And in watching Anderson, one can’t help but root for her – not just for the character she plays, but for the person she’s become.

The Last Showgirl opens in UK and Irish on 28 February 2025, with special nationwide previews on Tuesday 11 February