Priscilla (2023 | USA | 110 minutes | Sofia Coppola)
Using Priscilla Presley’s autobiography Elvis and Me (co-written with Sandra Harmon) as structure, Sofia Coppola presents her life as a series of baubles strung across a gossamer thread that spans the vast lonely gulf between a soda counter on an Army base in Germany in 1959 and a Las Vegas hotel in 1973. An extremely focused brand of biopic, in this telling Priscilla’s life is rendered as an often shapeless ellipse that begins with a teenager being invited to meet a homesick superstar and that ends when an adult mother finally ends a long-soured romance by finally asking for a divorce. Here, the intense gravitational pull of Elvis – and the vacuum of his absence – is intentionally frustrating while counterbalanced by a visceral appreciation of the fundamental allure that made it possible.
The incomprehensible true story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu is one of mid-century mindsets with haunting echoes of gothic fairy tales. A quiet high school sophomore doing her homework at a diner catches the eye of the man who books musical acts on a US Army base where Elvis is stationed. He asks if she likes Elvis, and when she says “yes” her life is irrevocably transformed. His reassurances somehow convince her otherwise responsable parents to let her attend a cocktail party where she’s the only child at the star’s compound. Having recently lost his mother, he’s eager for a connection with the youth and culture he left behind by enlisting in the military and takes an immediate interest in her. It’s unclear whether this is a cycle of procurement and grooming for a singer who became famous too fast, but from their first meeting, the connection is unseverable.
Elvis is portrayed by Jacob Elordi of Euphoria infamy (along with this year’s Saltburn). His is a far more interior performance than we saw from Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s recent hyperbolic history, but Coppola’s gaze nevertheless appreciates the Australian actor’s world-inverting hotness. It doesn’t matter if he looks exactly like the King (he would have towered over him with his 6’ 5” frame) or says “Mama” with the perfect accent, we’re seeing him through Priscilla’s awestruck eyes where he’s always dreamy and perfectly tailored (and spoiler, never bloated by excess, or overweight). A scene where he arrives for a first date, dressed in a cowlneck sweater perfectly coordinated with his shiny black Cadillac caused the entire theater to gasp audibly. From there, it’s obvious why the girl is so taken with him, clear why she would never relent on wanting to be with him, yet all the more unsettling that any adult in the room allowed his courtship to get beyond the front porch.
Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla and although the actress is in her early 20s, she’s styled and shot like a child in the early parts of the film. Her performance is a wondrous balancing act. She perfectly captures the teenage desire – for Elvis, for anything to break her away from her own homesick isolation, and for a catalyst to transport her from the bonds of childhood into the freedom of maturity – with a deeply realized performance. There’s trepidation in every step that counters the yearning for what’s next, the acceptance of danger in service of unknown discoveries.
He leaves the base, but her desire remains. Early years slip by in calendar pages and vintage magazine recreations until she’s granted a solo visit to Memphis with a whirlwind trip to Las Vegas. Pills are a constant presence. Soon enough she’s seventeen, they’re engaged, and she leaves her parents to finish her studies at an all girl’s catholic school while living at Graceland.
It’s Elvis who insists on a vague sort of chastity, at first a relief, later a frustration as Priscilla’s isolation and desires pile-up over the long lonely years. This may take some edge off of the precipitous age-gap of their romance, but as adult viewers in the twenty-first century, it’s terrifying to see a teenager forging headlong into an inadvisable relationship with an adult man, aided and abetted by handlers and conceded by parents who realize their power has been eclipsed by passion. Because Coppola situates the story from Priscilla’s vantage, no matter how unsettling, her commitment to the relationship vaguely makes its own kind of troubling sense as she grows from lovestruck child to isolated twentysomething fashion plate and finally to a disenchanted mother, ever on the verge of discovering her own agency.
From the opening montage, it’s a vibes movie. Coppola appreciates the nostalgic power of objects. Freshly painted red toenails navigating cotton-candy pink shag carpet. The application of fake eyelashes and perfectly painted cat eyes. A crystal chandeliers and a gleaming white custom gold-keyed grand piano. The tail fins of a shiny Cadillac. Aesthetics are essential to the act of transportation, and we’re in the hands of a director who revels in amplifying details for the sake of art. She dresses Priscilla in Chanel and Elvis in perfectly-tailored Valentino. The specifics might not be period accurate but the mood is perfectly curated. This aesthetic infuse their early years together as a series of wondrous moments punctuated by chasms of lonely months of separation. The magic of a night of childlike pleasures of roller skating and bumper cars gives way to ones paramor leaving with his friends to make a movie or go on tour, with his child bride left at home with only magazine gossip to spark jealousy over her beau’s antics in Hollywood.
Because of her fame by proximity Priscilla is portrayed as nearly friendless for the entirety of the film. Without the company or advice of any other women her only regular companion is a fluffy white puppy. Her time with Elvis is spent either alone in his bedroom (black leather walls, Jesus above the headboard, and pills at the bedside) or among his nameless gang of overgrown man children, getting up to antics on the Graceland grounds. There’s a potent romance when he’s around, but also an assumption of his complete control and angry snaps at any hints of differing opinion. Rare moments with women of her own age are fleeting and kept at a superficial distance. Even the joys of childbirth are complicated by the heartbreaking image of an urgently expectant mother holding up a drive to the hospital until she’s put her face on.
Coppola’s complete focus on these often shapeless, frequently metamorphic, constantly yearning decades spent in the shadow of the most famous man in the world is another enrapturing entry in what’s become a canon of films about young women on the verge. In a way, it feels in conversation with Pablo Larraín’s Spencer with Coppola brings us inside the uneasy realm of American royalty, another princess in the castle of an adoring and controlling King. The aesthetics are strong, the whirlwinds are interrupted by intense doldrums, even the makeover sequences reveal a controlling hand behind retail therapy. Rights issues mean that it all plays out with nary an original Elvis track, but this has the pleasant effect of keeping the focus outside his blinding spot long, from Phoenix’s original score to a soundtrack that culminates in the most perfectly selected closing track. It’s a perspective that relies on candid personal stories and a filmmaker’s mastery of her toolbox to transport an audience into an alien landscape.
Priscilla arrives in theaters on November 3rd
Images courtesy A24
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist. More information about the strikes can be found on the SAG-AFTRA Strike hubs. Donations to support striking workers can be made at the Entertainment Community Fund.