“The Last Showgirl” follows the fading fortunes of a Las Vegas star    

Those who still associate Pamela Anderson with "Baywatch," and discount her talent, have a surprise treat in store with director Gia Coppola's "The Last Showgirl." In it, she plays the aging rhinestone-and-feathers dancer Kelly, a Las Vegas star with her thirty-year career about to end when the hotel/casino unexpectedly decides to cancel her show, Le Razzle Dazzle.

Kelly's already struggling emotionally with her teenage daughter Shelly's reappearance, ageism, and women's exploitation. As Shelly, Billie Lourd incorporated memories from her grandmother Debbie Reynold's Las Vegas shows and her mother Carrie Fisher's experiences. Kelly must also navigate her current and past relationship with the stage manager Eddie, a solid Dave Bautista who masterfully adds humane concern to what could easily have been a stereotypical, unsympathetic boss.

Inspired by her experience at the showgirl revue "Jubilee!" in 2013 in Vegas, screenwriter Kate Gersten wrote "The Last Showgirl," peeling away the glitz and glamour in favor of the hard scrabble lives of the performers. These women juggle posing and dancing in 65-pound costumes with towering headdresses, attending to makeup and weight, navigating profit oriented bosses, and struggling to maintain a semblance of everyday normalcy. Often, the way they manage is sustaining each other, as Kelly's best friend Annette proves, a faded showgirl now scraping by as a cocktail waitress, tough as nails but crippled by alcohol and gambling.

A fabulous Jamie Lee Curtis used her research to create Annette's look and personality, increasing the film's unadorned authenticity. Two other showgirls, Jodie and Mary-Anne, add two more women struggling to maintain performance-oriented lives. It isn't easy. Shooting at the Rio Hotel and Casino, cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw chose 16-mm film for its raw, grainy quality, as he explains in interviews. The 16-mm look desaturates the idyllic illusion, a more sobering reality reinforced through the daytime scenes, devoid of the brightly lit, neon glow associated with Vegas. This also increased the contrast with the flamboyant costumes the actresses wore, all actual "Jubilee!" Bob Mackie designs. With Andrew Wyatt's music, including "Beautiful That Way" sung by Miley Cyrus, the cinematic harmony of all the elements delivers a unified, powerful portrait of this showgirl's life, a rather sad one at this point in her career. "The Last Showgirl" is available now.