Priscilla PEOPLE Review: Sofia Coppola Explores How Marriage to Elvis Presley Became a Heartbreak Hotel

Last year brought us Elvis, in which director Baz Luhrmann turned the wild, troubled life of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler, Oscar nominee) into a veritable carnival — thrill rides, wild crowds, even a sideshow tent housing a weirdo known as Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks ). Now we have an extraordinary new film from director Sofia Coppola about Presley’s first and only wife (Cailee Spaeny).

Think of this as an anti-Elvis. Priscilla is an understated, enigmatic fairy tale—a giddy girl’s dream of being chosen by the king to be queen—that ends in grown-up disappointment and divorce.

What makes the film both fascinating and troubling—what makes it haunting—is the way Coppola has the insight to tell the story with a kind of stereoscopic vision.

On the one hand, we are completely immersed in the perspective of young Priscilla, who is only 14 years old when 24-year-old Presley (Jacob Elordi) begins courting her. Lost in a romantic fantasy, she floats, slowly being drawn further into his irresistible orbit, until they finally marry.

By then, to her growing dismay and sadness, she is no longer the American starlet lucky enough to have caught Elvis’ attention during his military service in Germany. Now she’s kind of a Graceland concubine. Discouraged from doing anything outside the mansion except to finish her schooling, she moves – cautiously, under a black ring of lacquered hair – from empty room to empty room. She is expected to hang around in case Elvis, enjoying his love affairs while making movies in Hollywood, calls and invites her to the phone to ask how his doll is doing.

Priscilla.

Sabrina Lantos/A24

The film is an unusually exceptional depiction of this hollow existence — Coppola is one of the few directors, perhaps the only one, who is ready to invest (risk) the entire film story with such calmness. Priscilla’s situation is not much different from Scarlett Johansson’s empty hours in Tokyo Lost in translation (Coppola’s films, in fact, could probably be used by everyone lost somewhere in their titles), but there’s no Bill Murray to reassure her that she’ll be able to move on.

‘Priscilla’ star Cailee Spaeny says watching Priscilla Presley movie in Venice was ‘absolutely surreal’

All Priscilla has is her Elvis, who turns out to be a tall, cold drink with nothing (he physically dwarfs Priscilla. They’re like the Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln of rock ‘n’ roll). When he’s not sulking about his movie career, he’s sulking about the songs he’s supposed to perform (Coppola is denied access to Presley’s catalog, so there’s no Elvis Pelvis in evidence). Wherever he goes, he’s accompanied by a giggling entourage of man-friends—his own assortment of Ken dolls.

Priscilla.

Ken Woroner/A24

Priscilla, whose waning innocence is brilliantly captured by Spaeny (the performance is like watching morning dew evaporate from a lawn), ends up as imprisoned as Diane Keaton’s Kate at the end of the film godfather, the mafia masterpiece directed by Coppola’s father, Francis Ford Coppola.

But then there’s our own contemporary perspective—our dismay at the massive power imbalance between this male superstar and, at best, a very young woman. To us, Priscilla’s dream looks like captivity and abuse — as if Presley couldn’t help but fall in love with Lolita. Coppola’s repeated shots of Priscilla’s painted toenails may or may not be a reference to the opening minutes of Stanley Kubrick’s infamous film adaptation of that Nabokov novel, just as the scene in which Elvis dictates Priscilla’s wardrobe may or may not echo a very similar moment between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak inside Dizziness, the ultimate #MeToo cinematic nightmare. Your mind could just as easily register a cold, shivering reminder of bluebeard, with a young girl doomed to be the next victim of an old serial killer.

The point is that the film is saturated with this sexual discomfort. What Priscilla perceives as glamorous nothingness, the audience perceives as something more akin to fear.

The real Priscilla and Elvis. Getty

Eventually, Priscilla wakes up from her nightmare – she divorced Presley in 1973 – although this is where Coppola stumbles. There is no defining moment that marks Priscilla’s decision to leave Elvis. She just tells him, honestly though quite bluntly, that they don’t spend enough time together, that they’ve drifted apart and that’s it. Instead, we know that Priscilla is nearing the end of her Graceland journey, largely because her hair has reverted from her June Carter Cash updo to a soft, natural style—which, in countless, more conventional films, signals our heroine’s return to normality and emotional health.

At least Barbie was spurred into action by the stinging hint of mortality.

Priscilla opens in theaters Friday.

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Source: HIS Education