‘The Last Showgirl’ is reminiscent of 2008’s ‘The Wrestler’ in terms of the way it showcases someone with a set of skills that they have applied for decades, yet now find themselves no longer in their prime, and are facing a different work landscape where they are no longer in demand. Yet there is nothing else they can or want to do, and they would rather die trying to maintain a dream which has eluded them, yet from which they cannot run or escape, than change their pattern of life altogether.

Both films also show the emotional cost, to add to the financial instability, with estranged, unforgiving children who cannot see how the choices they made – as a Las Vegas showgirl in the case of Pamela Anderson’s outstanding performance in ‘The Last Showgirl’ – were sufficiently worth doing to justify the toll it took on their little ones. One caustic scene involves Anderson’s screen daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd) wanting to know why she was made to sit in a parking lot with a Gameboy to keep her occupied every evening as a child while her mother performed on stage in a tawdry act – ‘lame trash’ and a ‘stupid nudie show’ as she calls it – a question which Shelley (Anderson) cannot answer and about which she is in denial.

We join Shelley’s life at just the time the job she has done, and the stage she has trodden every night for 37 years, is about to close. Shelley auditions for a part at a circus show which is moving to the same venue, and we feel for Shelley when she is told, bluntly, that she is too old and past it. The only person with whom Shelley connects is a former showgirl, now casino floor cocktail waitress, Annette, played by Jamie Lee Curtis with layers of spray paint and at least an awareness that the top jobs are going to the younger, prettier girls at the casino in a way that Shelley is oblivious. Curtis has been Bafta-nominated for her exuberant but poignant role, as the world weary performer, who gyrates to Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ in a way that we know she has been doing every night, but the disconnection is palpable.

We almost see her soul being prized out from her body as she goes through the motions of what should be a sexually charged performance, but no one is watching her, and Annette knows that the dream has gone sour and will never come back. Shelley, on the other hand, is still chasing the ephemeral dream and doesn’t seem to believe that she needs to evolve. There is no life beyond the stage that is being torn down, and we can admire Shelley for holding fast and with integrity to the same dream, while also sensing that her options are severely limited, and she is resisting that reality.