Priscilla Review: Sofia Coppola's Latest Both Romanticizes And Criticizes Elvis
Watching "Priscilla" is like being in the body of a teenage girl and seeing the "Elvis" movie through a fuzzy pink blanket. A pop culture icon larger than life comes at you in bright flashes made soft by a girlish haze, and then he leaves you in a sharp grey loneliness. It's so abrupt and all-consuming. He is the only bright real American thing in a dark German world of serious soldiers and strict schoolteachers. But the moment Priscilla is swept into Elvis' orbit, the rest of the world melts away. It has to, there is no room for it — he insists upon that. A love like that is the stuff of fantasies for a fourteen-year-old girl — but as the romance becomes real, it consumes her young life.
Sofia Coppola's latest film recalls the memory of any teen fangirl. Imagine your heartthrob of choice sprung off the poster on your bedroom walls and fell in love with you — that's what happened to Priscilla Presley. "Priscilla" puts the audience inside the young protagonist's mind, seeing the world through her eyes and feeling what she feels. Cailee Spaeny's Priscilla is subtly emotive and totally naive with a precocious spark in her eye. Jacob Elordi of "Euphoria" fame is heart-meltingly charming as the softspoken King, a regular knight in shining armor, but before we know what hit us, he transforms into a beast. At first, Graceland feels like a far-off kingdom where Priscilla will finally be rescued from her dreary life as an army brat, but it quickly becomes a gilded cage. But as the audience takes this ride along with Priscilla, the path becomes less and less sure, and they may find themselves asking — more than once — are we there yet?
Priscilla romanticizes and criticizes Elvis
The moral critiques of Elvis within their marriage are measured, but not overly compassionate, which makes them all the more believable. We see Elvis attempt to honor their extreme age gap, but at the same time, Coppola does not attempt to hide the fact that Priscilla was inevitably groomed into the marriage before she knew anything else about the world. "Priscilla" is filled with neither hatred nor blind adoration for the King — a sobering portrait of the greatest love of his life (aside from his mother).
"Priscilla" has been critiqued for not including Elvis Presley's music — and the King's estate refusing to sign off on the film certainly turned off some die-hard fans — but in the opinion of this viewer, a lack of Elvis music was not a detriment to the film. "Priscilla" didn't need the rights to Elvis' music to tell its story. First off, what kind of self-respecting musician sits around listening to his own music? This diegetic truth lent itself to the realism of the movie. Second of all, the fact that the late pop musician's estate didn't sign off on the film is an indicator of its honesty about Elvis' dark side — which also lends some truth to his more tender moments. Most importantly, this film is about Elvis as an iconic figure, a heartthrob, and most importantly, a husband — not as a musician. The film doesn't attempt to challenge, emulate, or analyze Elvis' musical prowess, only to demonstrate the way his huge cultural presence translated into his romantic and domestic life.
Coppola explores running themes but does not crystallize them
Coppola's newest entry into her oeuvre incorporates many running themes in her work. Like the titular anti-heroine in "Marie Antoinette," a young girl is led blindly by her desires into a terrifying marriage to a powerful man. Elvis and Priscilla find each other on the army base, homesick fish out of water seeking connection — Elvis has just lost his mother, and Priscilla is struggling to make friends in Germany. This situation almost identically mirrors Coppola's other age-gap romance, "Lost in Translation."
"Priscilla" unfolds through vignettes, like so many of Coppola's films. The narrative unfolds over decades, and at times years span only a matter of minutes in the movie's runtime. These vignettes are the blips of time in which Elvis appeared and reappeared in Priscilla's life, a life that became ever-more constructed around these appearances. These were the moments the sun shone on her. However, these scenes elapse so quickly and span over so much time that the film at times feels like a trailer for itself. The thinly woven narrative stretched over so many unseen years all but disintegrates in the final third of the film as Elvis' presence fades. The King's looming specter is the thread holding the film — and Priscilla's young life — together. As he pulls away, things unravel.
How Priscilla compares to Elvis
Where the 2023 film succeeds is a visceral emotional and textural experience. The textures of "Priscilla" feel so real — the shag carpet, the false eyelashes. The beginning is exciting and romantic, the middle is a roller coaster of danger and thrill, and the end is defined by a growing distance. Priscilla's departure feels so cold. While this does successfully emulate their estrangement, it also feels too fleeting — this crucial moment in the film, just like the marriage itself, did not stick. Comparing it with the very same scene in Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" provides an interesting contrast. Luhrmann's scene is told through Elvis' lens and thus occurs as a tragic catastrophe marking the beginning of the end. In "Priscilla," this bittersweet goodbye is the beginning of a new life full of hope and self-determination.
The central relationship of "Elvis" — between the pop star and the Colonel — is seen only peripherally in "Priscilla." The domineering men in his life haunt the edges of the screen like a specter. Even his father only appears occasionally to boss someone around. They inhabit the corners of Elvis' life, controlling him from the shadows, just as Priscilla tugs at his heart from the edge of the frame in "Elvis."
Priscilla Presley is an executive producer on this film, which is based heavily on her memoir "Elvis and Me." This account of her lived experience is co-signed by Presley herself, and the fact that the creators resisted a third-party agenda from Elvis' estate or elsewhere is palpable. The pop star goes from a romantic hero to a pathetic man. He is neither a monster nor a saint in this film. Through avoiding moral grandstanding, "Priscilla" provides more clarity on Elvis' character than Luhrmann's take on the King, lending itself to the authenticity of Coppola's film.
/Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10