'Priscilla' Reviews Call Sofia Coppola Film 'Piercingly Honest,' 'Pleasurably Emotional Experience'

Critics said star Cailee Spaeny “gives such an intimate, lived-in performance” as Priscilla Presley and Jacob Elordi “find their own way into the character” of Elvis Presley

Critics at the 2023 Venice Film Festival give their early reactions PriscillaSofia Coppola’s upcoming film dramatizing the life of Priscilla Presley.

Starring Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley and Cailee Spaeny as his ex-wife, Priscilla based on the 1985 memoir Elvis and me. Priscilla, 78, appeared at the Venice premiere on Monday to promote the film A24 alongside Coppola, Elordi and Spaeny on the red carpet.

Among the first reviews to arrive on Monday afternoon, Diversity called critic Owen Gleiberman Priscilla “penetratingly honest drama” that approaches the themes with “pedantic docudrama authenticity”.

“The book on which the new film is based was Elvis and me. But Coppola’s film is called, simply, Priscillaand this points us to something important: that the film, although you could describe it as a love story, will not be told from a double point of view.”

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Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla Presley, Sofia Coppola and Jacob Elordi at the premiere of “Priscilla” at the Venice Film Festival.

Daniele Venturelli/WireImage

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Gleiberman also referred to the fact that Priscilla was 14 when she met the late King of Rock ‘n’ Roll in West Germany in 1959, saying that this story is “about the sincere love they shared, rooted in the fact that they were both, literally or in spirit, they were overgrown children.”

Spaeny, he added, “has a greedy eye and a sharp wit, and she plays the teenage Priscilla as a typical American girl of her time, polite and decent, albeit with a taste for adventure. After all, she lives in the world after Elvis Presley reworked her!”

The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney wrote it Priscilla “elegantly builds on a key player in the Elvis legend from the sidelines, and anyone attuned to Coppola’s signature wavelengths will find it a pleasurable emotional experience.”

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Elordi’s take on The King follows Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated performance in last year’s Baz Luhrmann biopic Elvisin which Olivia DeJonge played Priscilla.

Rooney noted that Elordi “finds his own way into the character, infusing seductive charm and undeniable magnetism into sad eyes and sleepy speech patterns. But he never escapes from those traits that most repel him – fits of anger, sullenness, evasiveness and dishonesty.”

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David Ehrlich of Indiewire praised “the film’s focus on a little girl slowly growing out of her childhood fantasy.”

Ehrlich added that Coppola’s “gentle and muted” approach contrasted with Luhrmann’s “orgiastic blockbuster”, instead choosing to “frame this claustrophobic marriage story as a gradual process of separation. Not only Priscilla’s separation from Elvis and the endless shadow of his celebrity, but and her separation from her parents, from her own iconography, and from everyone and everything that tried to define her before she could define herself.”

Many critics considered Priscillaplace in Coppola’s evolving filmography. The screenwriter and director, Ehrlich wrote, “has made a career out of liberating privileged girls from gilded cages… Lost in translation to Maria Antoinetteher films often framed marriage as the first purgatory step on the heroine’s path to real personality.”

Stephanie Bunbury of Deadline wrote, “Coppola was at her best when she observed the workings of fame, fortune and excess, not trying to cast or accuse anyone, but simply registering what she was seeing. The strength of her films is that they seem to see everything.”

Bunbury added that Priscilla is “a cursed look at a man and—ultimately—marriage… Most people know the gist of the Presley story. However, told from his ex-wife’s point of view, it becomes a very different story.”

Cailee Spaeny in “Priscilla”.

Sabrina Lantos/A24

For The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote that the film’s theme “becomes Memphis’ Lady Diana herself, with Ann-Margret or Nancy Sinatra playing Camilla Parker-Bowles.” Elordi, he said, doesn’t use “the pyrotechnics of introducing Elvis to outdo Spaeny’s Priscilla.”

“Coppola’s portrayal is stunning, especially in Priscilla’s child phase, and if it’s less recognizable in her final part, as Priscilla becomes increasingly disillusioned and realistic about what to expect, then that’s to be expected,” Bradshaw concluded. “Her gullible servitude and innocence are more dramatic and moving. This film speaks volumes about Elvis and his dysfunctional business and Priscilla’s modest integrity and courage.”

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In a review for Time, Stephanie Zacharek wrote that Elordi portrays Elvis “as a man drifting further and further away from the woman he loves, like an astronaut whose tether has been cut, even as he longs for closeness and connection. He’s not a bad guy; he’s just a mess. And in this story, he is just an assistant to the heroine. That’s not his story.”

“Spaeny gives such an intimate, lived-in performance that some viewers may not think it’s enough. That’s because she plays Priscilla as an observer, a young woman who gradually sees what’s wrong with her life and her screwed-up partner, but who by the end of the film can barely come to terms with what has happened to her over the past 10 years. And if you were in her satin heels, could you?”

A24

Priscilla told reporters at the Venice Film Festival press conference that “it’s very difficult for her to sit and watch a movie about you and your life and your love.”

She added: “I think Sofia did an amazing job, she did her homework. We spoke a few times and I really gave everything I could for her.”

Last month, Priscilla said The Hollywood Reporter she was “so nervous” about the film “because it’s my life… People watching, they live it with you, and you hope and pray that they get it. They get your feelings, your pains, your sensitivity.”

Priscilla it’s in theaters on October 27.

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Source: HIS Education