Priscilla: Sofia Coppola’s vision of the Presleys as unsparing as it is sympathetic

Friday, 2 February 2024

Priscilla (M, 130 mins)

Directed by Sofia Coppola

****

In 1959, Priscilla Beaulieu was 14 years old and living with her parents in West Germany.

Her father was an officer in the US air force. The family's home wasn't far away from a US army base. Near that base, in a house he rented to share with his father, grandfather and a retinue of his hometown buddies, lived arguably the most famous man in the world.

Elvis Presley was 24 and one year into his two-year conscription. The army had offered Elvis the choice of staying state-side — and seeing out his time as an entertainer — touring bases and performing publicity duties.

But, in a PR master stroke, Elvis’ manager — the notorious 'Colonel' Tom Parker — had decided that Elvis in uniform with a G.I. haircut was exactly what was needed to break his career into the family-friendly mainstream where the real money was to be made.

Before his service in the army, Elvis had a whiff of danger and rebellion about him — and there were still radio stations that refused to play his music. After Germany, the transformation into a multi-media superstar was underway.

Priscilla met Elvis at a party. By her account, they were both smitten, but also aware they could not be together. For the next two or three years, their relationship lived in an unknowable grey area of constant letter-writing and phone calls, with occasional extended stays at Elvis’ compound at Graceland, where she was chaperoned by Elvis’ grandmother and others.

Priscilla started living at Graceland in 1963. She married Elvis in 1967.

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla is based on Priscilla’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me. Coppola respects the source material and gives us the story from Priscilla's perspective (Priscilla also served as executive producer here).

By Priscilla's own account, she and Elvis were a couple of equally lost and confused kids adrift. Elvis' mother Gladys had died only a few months before she met him, and the army had already introduced Elvis to amphetamine use.

Jacob Elordi (Saltburn) plays Elvis as a young man only really at ease around a select group of close friends, who needs to take a deep breath and steel his nerves every time he leaves the house or exits a car.

Despite not looking a lot like Presley — Elordi looks more like he's been assembled out of baby giraffes — he still nails the voice, nervous mannerisms and anxiety the character demands.

But the absolute heart of this film is Cailee Spaeny (Mare of Easttown). Spaeny navigates Priscilla from an on-screen 14 through a decade-and-a-half of growth and turmoil.

She is so seamless in the role, and the choices she and Coppola make are so well-judged, that you might even lose sight of how astonishing Spaeny's performance is here. Actors allegedly compliment each other by saying, 'I couldn't see the work'. For once I think I understand what that means.

Coppola — The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation, Marie Antoinette — again scrapes away the fetishised surfaces of a woman-in-captivity narrative and finds a tougher, more nuanced story to tell.

As Priscilla grows and awakens within her own story, the pill bottles multiplying on the bedside table chart Elvis’ decline into paranoia and his anxiety that Parker's management and choice of material are turning him into an irrelevant sideshow. At a poolside party, a friend scans Elvis’ jukebox and asks 'shall we play one of yours, or shall we put on something good?'

Presley's career and reputation received an almighty bump via the 1968 Comeback Special, but his decline into the all-American amphetamine-drenched cheesecake of the Vegas years is well-chronicled elsewhere and Coppola needs only a few deft shots to sketch it in here.

Priscilla opens with a palette of gauzy edges, pastel interiors and sugary pop hits. The transition to the hard shadows, neon glare and synthetic surfaces of the later scenes is as imperceptible as it is relentless.

Coppola, Spaeny, Elordi — with long-time cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (The Beguiled) and editor Sarah Flack (Lost in Translation) — have found a way to tell this story that is as unsparing as it is sympathetic. Bravo.

Priscilla is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.