Shelly (Pamela Anderson) is a dancer in the Las Vegas topless show Le Razzle Dazzle, which, like many of the old casino mainstays, has fallen on hard times and is forced to share the stage for half the week with the sexy burlesque circus Hedonist’s Paradise, a show that offers the same nudity but without the rhinestone costumes or the patina of Parisian class. Despite being relegated to the back of the stage, surrounded by dancers decades her junior, Shelly remains convinced that she is a true, timeless artist, and is genuinely surprised and saddened when her daughter, attending the show for the first time, screams her contempt and anger at Shelly for choosing a sleazy porn show over being her mum. But perhaps the greatest pain and dismay is felt by Shelly when she is told to find another job as the show will be closing in two weeks. Abruptly forced out of the bubble of feathers and glitter in which she has protected herself from the passage of time, Shelly tries to get rehired, but painfully discovers how difficult it is to be a showgirl at 57. The film could also be called “The Three Ages of a Showgirl”, there are the young dancers for whom Last Vegas is still full of possibilities, there is Shelly, desperately unable to accept reality, even though her future does not need to be imagined: her close friend, the over sixty-year-old Annette, played with marvellous implausibility by Jamie Lee Curtis, has been a showgirl, then a cocktail girl, and now she is unemployed and homeless.  The Last Showgirl, whose scenes are often bursting with words, is essentially a very silent film; it is a film of gazes, Gia Coppola’s gaze as she observes the incomprehensible, quiet, stubborn madness of Shelly, and Shelly’s wide eyes staring out at the world as if silently asking permission for Shelly to always be a girl. Teresa Cavina