The former Baywatch star’s turn as a veteran Vegas dancer single-handedly rewrites her career in Gia Coppola’s bruising and beautiful film

A life spent in the service of dreams and fantasy collides with unforgiving reality: Pamela Anderson’s veteran Vegas showgirl Shelly is forced to face a future that no longer has need of her 1,000-watt smile and glitter-smeared decolletage. The third feature from Palo Alto-director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia), The Last Showgirl is a wisp of a thing, clocking in at under 90 minutes and shot in just 18 days. The film’s structure, more a series of vignettes than a linear narrative, feels like the fleeting reflections of a life captured in the facets of a mirror ball. It’s initially tempting to dismiss the picture, like its central character with her breathy, little-girl voice, as superficial. But there’s a bruising cumulative power to this melancholy little paean to an ending era. And Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.

Shelly has only ever been a showgirl; with well over 30 years of service under her garter belt, she is, by no small margin, the longest-serving cast member of Le Razzle Dazzle, an old school Vegas spectacle full of rhinestones, forced smiles and barely there costumes. The show is the last of its kind. It is, says Shelly firmly, a descendent of Parisian Lido culture. But Vegas punters, it seems, no longer have the appetite for showbiz cultural relics, even if they come dolled up in ostrich feathers and nipple tassels. Le Razzle Dazzle has already lost half of its weekly shows to an X-rated adult circus. And now comes the news, delivered by the socially maladroit stage manager Eddie (a lovely, low-key, sad-sack turn from Dave Bautista) that the casino’s management has decided to close the show for good. For most of the girls, who view the gig as just another job that pays the rent, it’s an annoyance. But for Shelly, whose whole identity is wrapped up in her status as a Razzle Dazzle showgirl, it’s an existential emergency.