Priscilla

As someone who never got super into Elvis, I know little of the detail surrounding his life, meaning I can’t speak to the veracity of the events depicted on screen. So what I want from a movie concerning his life or the lives of people around him is a compelling stand-alone story, where even if it’s embellished or biased or whatnot, I can appreciate and even enjoy what’s going on. Baz Luhrmann achieved it with Elvis last year, by going big and bombastic and sprinting through his life at a breakneck pace. Sofia Coppola is a very different filmmaker, so that was never going to be her approach. She makes quiet character dramas, which tend to be more my thing than the carnival amusement style of Luhrmann.

Priscilla covers the period from the first meeting of Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) and Elvis (Jacob Elordi) until their divorce. He’s immediately taken with her, despite her being ten years younger at just 14-years-old. She reciprocates, owing to some combination of infatuation and being starstruck that she believes is love. Such begins a whirlwind obsession in which her schooling is neglected as she spends more and more time with Elvis and his posse, eventually moving into Graceland with him during her senior year of high school. And very quickly, she discovers the full nature of their relationship wasn’t quite clear to her.

The first important detail is revealed during the opening credits: not only is this based on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, she also served as an executive producer on the film. So in terms of how “true” this is, I take it with a grain of salt. The involvement of the subject in the making of a movie has the potential to compromise its integrity, since they have incentive to ensure the most positive depiction possible makes it to screen. That’s not to say Coppola wrote to sanitize and please the real Priscilla: it’s just to say that assuming the movie would have come out the exact same without her involvement is naive. Especially as the opposing party has no ability to speak for themself.

That being said, it’s not like Priscilla’s version of events is hard to believe. I repeat, she started dating one of the most famous and popular men in the country, if not the world, at the age of fourteen. When he was in his 20s. The power dynamics there are nearly impossible to truly comprehend. Few people could honestly say they’d have made different choices. You too would have turned a blind eye to his condescension. To the way he immediately asserted his control over you, brushing it off as “he just knows what he likes”. To his sudden bursts of rage. To his refusal to satisfy your needs. All of that and more Priscilla views as the cost of dating her hero.

It makes for an incredibly uncomfortable watch, especially in the first part when it’s all portrayed as roses. To be clear, Coppola knows what she’s doing. She very deliberately shows us almost no development of their relationship, because this is not a love story. They have their moments of joy and connection (usually when Elvis is more playful and child-like), just enough to make clear it wasn’t all bad, so Priscilla has reason to stay. In his more sober moments, Elvis is shown as an incredibly insecure womanizer, and in need of constant support and reassurances. While we don’t see his darkness yet, her youth hangs over the whole relationship, preparing us for the other shoe to drop. And we know every decision she’s making is bringing her closer to that moment.

But Priscilla is so demure, so eager to please, to mold herself into whatever shape he wants, that we never get a sense of her character. She is a doll, almost completely lacking agency. The only thing we know she wants is him. She has no friends, and barely any allies in the house. Everyone is either an Elvis hanger-on, or his family. So when he abandons her to jet off to Hollywood for his movie shoots (and to get involved in some very public extracurriculars), she’s left all alone. But all we get from that is how much he sucks, nothing about her.

Which is the strange thing about this film. It is ostensibly about Priscilla, but ends up using her as a way to tear down the myth of Elvis. I mean, fair enough, by all means discuss how his shiny modern image is a sanitized view. It’s just that she’s relegated to backbencher in her own movie, to a passive observer and victim of his monstrous behavior. While that’s clearly one element, I doubt she’d cease to label herself there.

The other thing that causes these events to land awkwardly is how many of the emotional moments come out of nowhere. They’re momentary outbursts with no build and barely any comedown. As such, they almost feel like accidents. Obviously they’re very intentional, and my best guess is Coppola wants them to ring out more loudly by standing tall above the emotional level of the rest of the scene. Instead, they just feel hollow and arbitrary, even though I’d assume they’re based on real things. For example, there’s one point in particular when she yells at him about how she has needs. But it’s a few beats after he rejected her advances once again, and immediately afterwards he gets up to leave and she drops it. Yes, it shows this is a toxic relationship, but we’ve been getting that from so many angles that this moment just rings hollow instead of reinforcing that point.

Spaeny is quite good at showing some internal turmoil on her face, despite never expressing any of it out loud. She’s not impressive enough to elevate the movie, but she’s good. However, the core question is: Team Elordi, or Team Austin Butler (from Elvis)? Which is a false choice: both serve their movie quite well. Butler is an absolutely electric, larger than life figure for a celebration of the man. Elordi pops that balloon by nailing the swagger while punctuating it with underlying pathetic, insecure, and erratic behaviors, making it easy to see Elvis doing these horrible things.

The last thing to mention is the work on the hair, makeup, and costuming, all of which are superb. They collaborated to seamlessly age the characters across fourteen years. I even correctly guessed Priscilla’s exact age when she first appeared on screen, long before it was stated, despite the actress being almost twice that. This is the latest in a long line of proof that very, very few stories need to lean on purely digital de-aging.

All in all, this really didn’t do much for me. It’s not terrible by any means, but it fails to ever really get past its initial setup, making it feel like almost two hours of repetition. The filmmaking is not good enough to distract you from how little is really being said in the story. And it’s not told in a interesting or engaging way. Maybe I’m just not a Sofia Coppola fan. But whatever the reason, I can’t suggest you prioritize this one.