Rating: 8.6
It’s unfortunate that this movie came out so recently after Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis did. Unfortunate because most will look to that as the “definitive” Elvis biopic — while it is in many ways, there are an equal number of ways that Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla offers deeper insights into Elvis and Priscilla Presley and their very famous relationship.
Truly, these two films shouldn’t be compared as they are very different. However, since they will be I’ll throw my thoughts into the ring. Elvis was a very erratic, wacky film that had too much going on to the point that you never really engaged with it, moreso just followed along as it quickly gave you flashes of significant events in Elvis’ life. Priscilla, on the other hand, focuses on one element of the Elvis story — his relationship and marriage with Priscilla. Plus, in this film, rather than taking an objective perspective like in Elvis, we get to follow the perspective of Priscilla and see Elvis the way she saw him, which is a far more compelling setup for a story.
Sofia Coppola holds nothing back (losing permission to the music rights in the process), as she artfully captures the loss of innocence and darker aspects of the famous relationship between Priscilla and Elvis. She was the perfect filmmaker to tell this story from this perspective, directing it almost like a dark fairytale.
Delicate and quietly fierce, at first glance, this film may not appear to share much with Oppenheimer and Killers of The Flower Moon, but they all have one thing in common: depicting the banality of evil in an almost detached way, framing objectively problematic events through a subjective individual's experience. Somehow, all three are able to say so much without preaching, presenting you with ugly and evil things and allowing their ugliness to be self-evident, often through juxtaposition between intense sin and mundane ordinariness.
Priscilla does not include impassioned monologues about female independence or misogyny—in fact, it's arguable that the heroine makes her first active choice in the final moments of the film—but it manages to grab you with its subtle allure and wrap you up in something that feels somehow good and gross, a delightful and desirable fairy tale and a slow-motion car accident from which you can't look away. It's hard to praise performances without being generic, but suffice to say that Cailee Spaeny's eyes and little half-smiles are doing so much heavy-lifting here—and Jacob Elordi somehow pulls off Elvis far more effortlessly than Austin Butler, in all his intense energy, could have ever dreamed. The seemingly 10-foot divide in height between the two of them helps, too.
Without even opening his mouth, Elordi embodied the essence of Elvis with his mannerisms and the way he carried himself. And when he did speak, that Southern drawl could charm anyone. Spaeny’s performance from a naive and vulnerable fourteen-year-old to an emotionally mature adult was flawless. (I was amazed how the performance and the hair/makeup/clothing seamlessly worked to convince the audience of Priscilla’s age in each period.) Spaeny’s doe-eyed innocence at the beginning slowly turns to a sexual hunger and then pure emptiness. She was molded into the “perfect” wife by Elvis, and she had no freedom to choose her path in life.
The movie looks gorgeous and the soundtrack is phenomenal. The choice by Elvis’ estate to not let his music in the movie worked positively for it. Without that music, he loses some of the mystique he has. He’s just a normal abusive man.
I really enjoyed Priscilla - it is quite a special film that I hope people find! The mainstream take on this story will always be Baz Luhrman’s version, but this truly has something more to offer. And that's to say nothing of the direction; there's an almost Phantom Thread level of soft and silky atmosphere here that makes the whole thing feel like ASMR, which only heightens the dysfunction that occurs within that gentle world. I loved the subtlety to Sofia Coppola’s direction and was compelled the entire time; I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. The fact that the story ends at what feels like the halfway point only drives home the feeling that, for Priscilla Presley, that's what it was. Unfortunately, this film does lose a bit of its momentum near the end as it becomes less cohesive and jumps years forward between scenes, but it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the film. This is definitely my preferred film compared to last year’s presentation of these characters.
Priscilla is a subtle piece of art from Sofia Coppola. Cailee Spaeny is a marvelous revelation while Jacob Elordi turns in a subdued, more complex version of Elvis. Highly recommend it.
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