Priscilla review: A thoughtful, stylish reframing of Elvis
Review Overview
Cast
8Direction
8Loneliness
8Ivan Radford | On 03, Mar 2024
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Dominczyk
Certificate: 15
Think you know Elvis? Think again. Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s retelling of the music icon’s relationship with Priscilla Presley is as far away from Baz Luhrmann’s recent biopic as it’s possible to be. Where that leaned into the glitz and glitter of Presley’s existence, including his manipulative manager, Priscilla is a stark, poignant affair, showing us what life was like on the fringes of that whirlwind.
Coppola, whose film is adapted by Priscilla’s own book Elvis and Me, introduces us to Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) when she’s 14, and the 24-year-old Elvis (Jacob Elordi) takes an interest in her. That age gap appropriately rings alarm bells with Priscilla’s parents, but Elvis and his family promise that she will be chaperoned at all times, and there’s a sense that there’s little they can do to protect their young daughter from the sheer star power of Elvis.
For his part, the singer is clearly lonely and sad in his stardom – and the script delicately delves into the way that Priscilla’s innocent youth gives Elvis someone to confide in, especially in the aftermath of his mother’s death. Jacob Elordi doesn’t have the larger-than-life charisma of the man himself, but that feels intentional: Elordi’s Elvis is a vulnerable and confused narcissist, easily swayed into questionable religious movements and seemingly only able to be at home when he’s surrounded by a group of swaggering male friends.
We watch, repeatedly, as he asks Priscilla to go upstairs and wait for him in his room – and while he is very clear that they will not have intercourse, that doesn’t diminish the impact of him always pushing Priscilla to the sidelines. “We are leading separate lives,” Priscilla eventually tells him, but it isn’t really news to either of them.
Cailee Spaeny, who impressed in Mare of Easttown, is superb as Priscilla, playing the teenager as hurt beyond her years. She’s heart-wrenchingly happy to fall for Elvis, even as she anxiously reads in the newspapers the latest conjectures and rumours about his flings with Hollywood co-stars. Her denial slowly begins to dawn on her and Spaeny is note perfect as someone realising that her life has been closed down and reduced, one day at a time. The rare times that she does go out and about with Elvis in public, he tells her what to wear and how to do her make-up, and it’s sad to watch as her initial demands for independence are gradually ground down by grooming behaviour.
Copolla’s storytelling is a stylish and sensitive as ever, crafting a world of muted greys and wide shots for Priscilla to capture her boredom and isolation, as well as the bright colour that Elvis brings into what Priscilla sees as her mundane life. Coppola captures how that excitement and attention leads to an understandable, if unhealthy, emotional attachment for the teen. She also finds room to highlight the happiness the couple genuinely share at times, something that other filmmakers would lose amid the nuanced messiness.
With no Presley songs on the soundtrack at all, the result is an unique experience of the King at arm’s length – a thoughtful counterpart to 2022’s Elvis that would also make for a powerful double-bill with Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage. An understated but no less complex study of codependency, it’s a reminder that one person in a gilded cage is still capable of controlling and containing another.