“Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,” cooed Marilyn Monroe, but most of us have to settle for rhinestones. That’s long been true of Shelly, Pamela Anderson’s title character in “The Last Showgirl,” a generous and sweetly elegiac ode to a rapidly disappearing Las Vegas and the women who helped build this colorful oasis. Similar to the Vegas statue known as the Blue Angel – a 15-foot-tall figure of a full-bodied female Seraphin erected when the Rat Pack was based there – Shelly has achieved monument status.

A veteran performer in a casino stage show called “Le Razzle Dazzle,” Shelly floated around the stage in a choreographed pageant for years—decades, if she’s being honest—and strolled among a bevy of equally bejeweled, half-clad dancers. Together they have made an old-fashioned revue spectacle a major attraction in the city, and their talent and beauty have shaped it as much as they have. One of the oldest dancers, Shelly also more or less grew up in Le Razzle Dazzle, and her The picture still adorns the souvenir brochure. However, after a long slide into insignificance, the show is on its last legs, leaving it at a dead end.

Directed by Gia Coppola (“Palo Alto”) from a screenplay by Kate Gersten, “The Last Showgirl” tells a familiar story of bad luck and outwardly questionable decisions with gentleness, a lot of love for its characters and an obvious appreciation for the affirming highs and bitter depths that offer age and beauty. With a modest scale and loose plot, it’s an unusually tender film and an ideal vehicle for Coppola’s gift for expressing the intangible and ephemeral. Everyday life has its dramatic intensities, but she also understands the power of silence, the weight of an immature emotion, and how the warmth of the sun can feel like a hug.

As the film begins, Shelly is already looking ahead to her next chapter and seemingly facing a very bleak outlook. As the story progresses, she tries to find a way forward while making peace with her adult daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), an aspiring photographer who holds a grudge against her. This mother-daughter thread is one of several the filmmakers draw, and is by far the least compelling. Hannah is a liability, and so is her intimidation (the film goes out of its way to pretend otherwise), but Shelly loves her and so she is tolerated. The most valuable thing about Hannah is the light she sheds on Shelly.

Anderson has long been one of those celebrities known for their “notoriety,” to use historian Daniel J. Boorstin’s phrase. She received positive attention in a Broadway production of “Chicago” a few years ago, but I doubt she’s often been asked to give a performance in which a character’s inner life is as important as her appearance. That’s a shame because she’s beautiful in The Last Showgirl. Her range may be limited, but her ability to be completely vulnerable on screen is rare and wonderful. She lets you see and feel Shelly’s hurt feelings, whether she’s just floating around town or sharing drinks and worries with her friend Annette (a sensational Jamie Lee Curtis).

Coppola frames Anderson compassionately in “The Last Showgirl,” both visually and narratively; Aside from Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven, Vegas has rarely looked more seductive. Working once again with her regular cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw — and shooting on 16-millimeter film — Coppola bathes the film in a diffused light that softens every harsh line in both the golden sunlight and the electric night. She also uses custom-made camera lenses that significantly blur the edges of the image – a striking effect that, in certain close-ups, transforms the characters’ surroundings into a luminous nimbus.

With Coppola, Anderson brings Shelly into focus in character-revealing detail, including her close relationships with two younger dancers, Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) and Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), as well as the show’s stage manager, the gruff, needy Eddie ( Dave Bautista). When you first meet Shelly, she seems like another child-woman stereotype, someone who, as Monroe’s Sugar Kane puts it in “Some Like It Hot,” always gets “the fluffy end of the lollipop.” Over time, you learn that Shelly is about much more than just how others see her (and how you see her). Although Shelly’s wavering self-confidence suggests that there’s a bit of Blanche DuBois in her Sugar Kane, the character exceeds all expectations.

The same goes for “The Last Showgirl,” which focuses on the kind of woman who would once have been relegated to the background in Hollywood, adding only glamor and flesh to spice up the scene. Coppola clearly loves the glitz and the flesh of Las Vegas, its glitz and its haze, but she loves her characters even more and takes each of them in her own way. By the end of the film you know a lot more about Shelly and her world than you did at the beginning, but not because the character goes through some sort of trite cinematic journey of self-discovery and acceptance. You know her because Coppola shows you the woman who was there from the beginning. All you have to do is open your eyes and heart to their shine.

The Last Showgirl
Rated “R” for living in Las Vegas. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In the cinema.