Director: Sofia Coppola
Writers: Sofia Coppola, Sandra Harmon, and Priscilla Presley
Stars: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen
Synopsis: When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend.
There’s a line Aaron Sorkin once wrote years ago that immediately popped into my head while watching Sofia Coppola’s minimalist biography of Priscilla Presley. Coppola evokes a sense of innocence (and purity lost) from a simpler time that was anything but wholesome. Priscilla is that anti-Baz Luhrmann Elvis movie. One that strips away the lore, the razzle-dazzle, and exposes what Sorkin was talking about when he wrote, “The things we do to women.”
What’s wrong with the way these two met and fell in love? Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) was only 14 years old then, and Elvis (Jacob Elordi) was 24 while stationed in Germany. The teenager, who wasn’t old enough to drive, smoke, or have a drink, was approached by one of Elvis’s buddies at a local diner. This buddy had no business taking a pubescent teen to party on that German Army base. The excuse is that Elvis liked to talk to people from home because he was homesick. As if, somehow, that made everything okay.
That’s the start of Priscilla, based on the nonfiction book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon. The other patrons at the party hardly batted an eye when the King of Rock and Roll invited the teenager to his room, where they would meet in a few minutes. Like any man of power, his entourage never said anything because they wanted to be part of it all. Elvis was always surrounded by his buddies, no matter the situation or intimate occasion.
Like most celebrities, Elvis was insecure and the film captures the insecurities of the rich and famous. Coppola’s adaptation subtly highlights these themes that led to Elvis practically using Priscilla for multiple purposes that never took her feelings and needs into account, but only his own. In the film, Coppola draws a powerful comparison. When Elvis is granted permission from Priscilla’s father to stay in Graceland with him, he goes on the road and leaves her an adorable poodle to keep her company.
The white pup has its small fenced-off area, its own Graceland. When Elvis returns, you see the similarities. Elvis is using Priscilla as his companion. She cannot bring home friends from school. Priscilla has to stay at home and cannot get a part-time job or talk to any office assistants working in the house. Elvis even dresses her, tells her how to wear her hair and makeup, and changes her hair color, making a teenage girl look like she’s trying to seem older than her age.
Coppola’s Priscilla is a beautiful prison of lonely isolation. This is never more apparent than when we see Spaeny’s stoic and soulful gaze out of the window, framed by some white windowsills and the blue wildflowers of Tennessee swaying slowly in the wind. The performances bring the long courtship and marriage to a terrible light. Elordi is very good here, displaying a spot-on accent and playful, disarming charm, but he can also be ignorantly controlling and abusive without warning, with a quick-trigger temper.
The extraordinarily tall actor has Elvis use his tremendous size to impose fear, towering over Priscilla. Then there’s the emotional abuse, threatening to send his wife away or leave her, using her tears as validation (and in another incredible scene where Priscilla calls his bluff; he crumbles in fear she will leave him forever). Even the use of pregnancy is another way to keep Priscilla in the home, preventing her from having the power of free will or choosing to have a life of her own.
Then you have Spaeny, who gives a thoughtful performance. The Devs and Mare of Easttown star won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, and her performance is extraordinarily instinctual here, displaying realism when someone suffers in silence despite the trappings of wealth around them. Spaeny conveys complex emotions and situations with subtlety and nuance well beyond her years. When you leave the theater, you’ll know this is one of the year’s standout performances.
There are times when Priscilla lacks energy, and it is a film that will be hard to embrace for mainstream audiences (especially anyone looking for a companion piece to last year’s Elvis). Yet, that’s beside the point. Coppola’s film is a work of art and has much to say about why we reached the tipping point of the fourth wave of feminism in the past decade.
It’s the things we do to women.
