It’s difficult for me to talk about this film without addressing the fact that Priscilla was just 14 when she first met Elvis Presley. I really enjoyed this film but a dark cloud loomed over me which dragged me away from the movie. However, throughout the first half of the film, there are whispers that their relationship was strange to everybody, which somewhat eased my viewing but not fully. Perhaps times were different back then.
It’s been over a week since I watched the film, and it took me watching interviews from the Cannes Film Festival of Priscilla Presley herself, Sofia Coppola and the cast to fully understand and appreciate how the subject was approached. The dark cloud may remain above me, but it’s definitely tamed itself to a lighter grey.
Priscilla Presley found herself in the most unique situation ever imaginable. How many teenagers can say they married their celebrity crush? And not only are they famous, but the “King of Rock”.
We watch Priscilla grow from a teenager into a woman, in snippets of important parts of their relationship. From the first time they met, to the time she moved to Graceland, to their marriage, the birth of their child and to the time she finally was brave enough to leave him.
Jacob Elordi’s Elvis is very different compared to Austin Butler’s portrayal in Baz Luhrman’s Elvis which came out last year. In Sofia Coppola’s masterful film, we only ever see Elvis whenever he bothered to come home to Priscilla, where we see how hot and cold he really was. We witness how loving he was but we also see sudden bursts of manipulation and violence – a side of Elvis we’ve not yet explored before on film.
Cailee Spaeny is perfectly cast as Priscilla for her first role as a lead actress. I felt her every emotion as she walked the empty corridors and stared out of the windows of Graceland, waiting for her King to finally arrive, only to give her small pockets of love.
Sofia Coppola made the artistic approach not to include any Elvis songs. This is Priscilla’s story after all. There are, however, a few classics of that era from the Ramones and Brenda Lee, to name a few.
The overall vibe of the film is quite charmingly dreamy through the cinematography of Phillips Le Sourd, who has worked with Sofia on The Beguiled (2017) and On the Rocks (2020) – both of which are definitely worth watching.
It may take time, but once you see past how young Priscilla was, you’ll witness a slow-paced, aesthetically pleasing, well-crafted film by Sofia Coppola who is no stranger to depicting broken women on the big screen.