"Priscilla" - Film Review
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, Priscilla wouldn’t exist.
Writer/director Sofia Coppola has spent her career examining the pressures, pains, joys, and thrills of womanhood at various times throughout history. Specifically, Coppola has focused her lens on young women and the hefty burdens placed on their shoulders as they are coming of age. She burst onto the scene in 1999 with The Virgin Suicides, one of the finest examinations of teenage angst and loneliness on film. Coppola’s newest release, Priscilla, aligns with her past films and her desire to examine privilege, isolation, and femininity. Much like Coppola’s biopic-ish take on Marie Antoinette’s life, Priscilla is a dreamy adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir, Elvis and Me. But don’t let my use of “dreamy” fool you. Priscilla strips the glitz and glamor away from The King and Coppola brings the relationship down to earth.
In 1959, Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) is living in Germany with her family. Originally from Texas, the family moved across the ocean because of her father’s position in the U.S. military. This army base happens to be the same one where a very famous heartthrob is stationed. That heartthrob is none other than Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). He invites Priscilla, who is fourteen, to one of his house parties. Their relationship grows, with Elvis and Priscilla eventually returning to the United States as Elvis’ career continues to skyrocket.
A24
It’s hard to not think of Priscilla without remembering Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis epic from last year. For most of the public, Priscilla’s story is intrinsically tied to that of Elvis’ and they know of her only through her marriage to the singer. That’s certainly the case in Elvis, where Priscilla is rarely seen and only exists as a background character in the chronicle of Elvis’ life. And, to an extent, that makes sense. A movie called Elvis is not going to pull a bait-and-switch and focus on someone else. One has to wonder if Priscilla was always titled that way, or if it was a direct, meaningful critique on Luhrmann’s 2022 film. Perhaps Coppola wanted to put the spotlight fully on Priscilla and, by giving the film her name, create the feeling that even though Priscilla was’t the internationally renowned rock star, her story and her life are of equal importance.
Coppola does not for a single moment allow the audience to forget how young Priscilla was when she first met Elvis. She was fourteen and he was twenty-four. Even if you take out the fact that Elvis is a megastar at this time, there’s a massive power imbalance between people of those ages. Coppola shines in her ability to show both the dreaminess of young love and the way abuse snakes its way through their entire relationship. Never does Priscilla glamorize this relationship, but Coppola does allow the audience to see how a fourteen-year-old girl could very easily get swept up in the charm of a rock star. Every moment of Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship is undercut with this unsettling feeling, a darkness looming that Priscilla doesn’t seem to pick up on. A darkness that’s obvious to older audience members who can see the red flags waving across the screen, but not evident to the young girl pulled into the spotlight.
In biopics, it can be awkward when a single actor portrays a person through an extended period of time, especially when the story starts in the person’s early years. (Margot Robbie and Sebastian Stan in I, Tonya come to mind.) Spaeny magnificently pulls off the look of a fourteen-year-old and that of a twenty-seven-year-old. Not once does she look like she’s an adult playing a child or vice-versa. It’s a seamless performance that should be the talk of the town come awards season. She balances the youthful puppy eyes with the pain she endures as she spends more and more time in Elvis’ orbit. Speaking of the star, Elordi’s resemblance to Elvis in profile is almost uncomfortable. He has the charm, the voice, and the ability to turn on a dime to immense anger.
The glaring omission in Priscilla is the lack of Elvis music. Presley’s estate did not give the film permission to use any of the songs, and it’s better that way. This choice that was forced upon the film effectively took Elvis’ voice out of the project. We’ve heard his music and his story for decades. This is Priscilla’s time to be the loudest voice in the room. In signature Coppola fashion, she used an anachronistic soundtrack to complement her film. She expertly pairs “Crimson and Clover” and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” with scenes that deliver powerful wallops.
Priscilla is nowhere near as bombastic as Elvis. It’s the quiet, nuanced story of a young girl whose kindness and naïvité were taken advantage of in the name of a man’s desire for fame.
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