‘Priscilla’: An intimate look at her uncomfortable relationship with Elvis
When I watched Baz Luhrmann’s biopic on Elvis Presley where Austin Butler plays the King of Rock and Roll, I was amazed by how the Australian filmmaker told his story which felt like an epic Shakespearean tragedy.
However, Luhrmann’s signature “glitz and glamour” direction isn’t strong enough for me to shrug off the biggest ick I have about the film which glossed over the problematic aspects of Elvis’ relationship with his wife Priscilla.
Elvis, 24, first met Priscilla Beaulieu, 14, in West Germany when he was serving in the army following the moral panic against his hip-driven performing style while her family had to relocate from Texas as her father was also in the military.
An adult actively pursuing a relationship with a teenager is a huge no-no, as it should be. That time, however, their relationship was treated more like an unusual pairing as pieces of advice from Priscilla’s parents that Elvis should date someone his age were treated like suggestions and not common moral decency.
While Luhrmann’s movie focused on Elvis’ life from childhood until his death, Sofia Coppola’s take, distributed by CreaZion Studios (formerly T-Rex Entertainment) and which hit Philippine cinemas last January 31, exclusively looks at his relationship with Priscilla from her perspective, starting with the moment they first met in 1959 until she told him that she wanted to divorce in 1973.
Sofia, whose dad is “The Godfather” director Roman Coppola, is the perfect filmmaker to tackle the life of Priscilla who herself is involved as executive producer, with her 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me” serving as basis for the screenplay.
Sofia’s films such as “The Virgin Suicides” and “Marie Antoinette” are told from a very specific gaze that treats its narrative like a photo album: each picture is analyzed carefully and studied extensively. Regardless of what critics say about her films, her atmospheric storytelling made her a cinema icon among millennial and zoomer cinephiles.
While Priscilla’s relationship with Elvis has been turbulent, she has publicly shown how much she deeply loves and cares for her ex-husband, while also subtly acknowledging how problematic their relationship was. This is probably why she trusted Coppola to depict their romance in a way that best explains how she completely feels, and not focus too much on trying to find juicy revelations.
As such, some viewers may be disappointed that the depiction of the power imbalance between Elvis and Priscilla is mild and quickly resolved with an embrace, which is part of the titular character’s inner conflict.
However, the way it depicts the relationship on Elvis’ end is already enough for his estate and their late daughter Lisa Marie, who passed away in 2023, to condemn Coppola over how she negatively portrayed the music icon.
What viewers can expect from “Priscilla” is that it tells the story of a teenage girl trying to find her independence and self-worth in a relationship where she has to give too much and receive very little.
At the start of the film, Priscilla is head over heels for Elvis. She feels she should be grateful to be in a relationship with a legendary performer -- something any diehard fan would kill for.
It’s shown in scenes where Priscilla starts abusing prescription drugs with Elvis to keep up with his lifestyle, in a montage where she serves breakfast in bed to Elvis when he wakes up at almost four in the afternoon, and when she feels lonely when Elvis isn’t around at their Tennessee home called Graceland because he’s in Hollywood shooting a movie and dating his co-stars, which are plastered all over the tabloids much to her annoyance.
At the end of the film, Priscilla gains autonomy over her own life as the two begin to grow apart. She may still love him deep down, but she knows she feels more free and happier when she isn’t thinking about Elvis.
To illustrate how isolated Priscilla is for most of the film, it doesn’t use any of Elvis’ songs which would have captured how big of a star he was. In her point of view, he is just a boyfriend, she treats his fame as a job, and she is like a housewife expected to serve him when he returns to Graceland.
While the lack of Elvis music may have been due to the estate not allowing his songs to be used in a movie that puts him in a bad light, it’s also artistically advantageous for the story.
Coppola fans know very well how much the filmmaker likes using modern music in her films regardless of their timeline, like in “Marie Antoinette” which uses ‘80s new wave and post-punk music in a story that is set in 18th century France. This, to illustrate to audiences in 2006 that the teenage French queen’s immaturity may render her unfit to rule a country, but that she is unfairly put into a pedestal for her age.
With “Priscilla”, the usage of outof-period music such as “How You Satisfy Me” by the ‘80s band Spectrum and the 2007 song “The Crystal Cat” by Dan Deacon displays the melancholic feelings that Priscilla has about her relationship with Elvis, a feeling so universal that it transcends time.
This is part of Coppola’s strengths as an effective storyteller of this generation. Her complete understanding of today’s sensibilities through her quirks makes her films connect and seem fresh to viewers even if some may take place a long time ago.
Performance-wise, Cailee Spaeny delivers an outstanding performance as Priscilla. Her portrayal allows us to grow with her throughout the one-hourand-50-minute film as she ages from 15 to 28 years old.
It’s best not to compare Butler’s version of Elvis to Jacob Elordi as both characters are depicted differently. In Elordi’s case, he delivers a perfectly complex performance that leaves a bit of ambiguity as to whether he is truly villainous, or he is just a complicated man with very little to no emotional intelligence.
“Priscilla” is a coming-of-age film of a woman trying to find her footing while going through a problematic relationship that spanned years. Themes of self-worth and independence may be clichés, but the way Coppola executed them in consideration that she is retelling the story from Priscilla’s perspective goes to show why her story deserves to be seen, the same way Elvis’ story was told.
We should feel bad that Priscilla was groomed by an adult man who should have known better than to pursue a relationship with a minor. Through Coppola’s understanding of Priscilla, we should be able to understand why she has valid and complicated feelings about her ex-husband, even if many of us, if not most, have already made up our minds that their relationship should not have happened in the first place. Four stars out of five.