The end? Only in the title. Although it’s a film about the end of a long-standing career and the end of illusions after awakening from the American Dream, it’s also the remarkable comeback of Pamela Anderson and the director’s return of Gia Coppola, who won the Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastián IFF for her latest work.

Las Vegas in Gia Coppola’s third feature film looks different than usual. It is a city of melancholy, soft light and blue: the film is set in winter, the sky is often overcast, and the wind is blowing. There are also no crowds of tourists; finally, this is a story about the decline of a particular show. Screenwriter Kate Gersten was inspired by an authentic revue, Jubilee, last staged in 2016. The theatre where the main character (Pamela Anderson) works has changed its program after several decades. Shelley is a dancer in her fifties, with no classical training (which will be brutally pointed out to her at one moment), and revue is her whole world. She treats her work not only as entertainment for a mass audience but, first and foremost, as an art with roots in the best patterns of French burlesque. Although she has achieved mastery of her craft, the show’s producers decide to replace her with a younger, “visually more appetizing” generation. Shelley then faces a dilemma: what to do next with her life now that her greatest asset – her body – is no longer attractive?

Intimate cinematography by Coppola’s regular collaborator Autumn Durald Arkpaw allows you to enter a fading microcosm of the past.