Fame and young love
Sofia Coppola’s take on relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley is one of filmmaker’s best yet
There’s a lot of quiet —in an empty living room save for one woman, at Graceland, a few seconds of solitude representing minutes and hours and years — in the new film “Priscilla,” from writer-director Sofia Coppola.
The movie couldn’t tell its truth without it. We’re witnessing a version of Priscilla Presley’s wondrous life in the eye of the hurricane known as Elvis Presley. Last year’s Baz Luhrmann biopic “Elvis” had little interest in the eye; the movie was all fancy packaging. “Priscilla” opens a far more intriguing package.
Coppola has made a generation’s worth of features by now, since “The Virgin Suicides” in 1999. This is her eighth, and “Priscilla” is one of her best, a carefully considered evocation of celebrity, intimacy and the precarious intersection of the two.
It is 1959. Priscilla Ann Beaulieu, played with ease from ages 14 to 27 by Cailee Spaeny, adapts as well as
she can as a vaguely disoriented fish out of water. A military brat accustomed to relocations, Priscilla finds herself in West Germany, where her mother and U.S. Air Force stepfather have moved.
The biggest star in the universe is stationed there too. Through an intermediary at the local malt shop, Priscilla receives an invite to a party hosted by G.I. Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” sets the mood for their first meeting, negotiated with her parents’ wary approval.
At night, Priscilla is scoped by the eagle eyes of revelers closer to Elvis’ age than to the ninth grader in their midst.
Elvis, Priscilla has been told in advance, likes to meet folks from back home. It takes one kiss from this unique combination of superstar confidence/ bashful mama’s boy for Priscilla’s head to swim. (This was a strategic courtship; she didn’t become Priscilla Presley until she turned 18.) The movie exists in hushed wonderment, magical one minute, bittersweet the next.
Soon enough, this star-kissed teenager’s life is the stuff of ever more amazing waking dreams.
With Elvis away in Hollywood making movies and whoopee with Nancy Sinatra or Ann-Margret, Priscilla becomes an unmarried but spoken-for princess at Graceland, Elvis’ Tennessee palace. The pills, which Elvis gets her on early, turn
him into an experiment in chemical imbalance. Everywhere he goes, a Greek chorus of yes-men follows.
Coppola, who has known more first- and second-hand celebrity than the average contemporary filmmaker, seems well-attuned to Priscilla’s experiences, and to dawning realizations of what her life has become. Now and then “Priscilla” settles for standard-issue biopic shorthand, as when Elvis shuts down his woman’s desire to work: “It’s either me or career, baby.” But in this context, without the usual emphasis, the line feels honest and authentic, even in the midst of the dream of desire, love and eventual departure.
The ending’s less than it should be, and Coppola usually never makes movies that follow prescribed, crowd-pleasing narratives.
You won’t find anything about Col. Tom Parker here, or much glitz beyond a few tasty montages blending archival footage of Vegas, for example, with some classically inclined shots of a roulette wheel and Priscilla and Elvis, looking like down-home royalty.
What you get with Coppola’s perspective, and Priscilla Presley’s, is a small, sure film about the largest of royal showbiz lives led in the harshest of spotlights.
Thanks to “Priscilla,” we know more about how Priscilla Presley found herself there in the first place — and what it may have looked, felt and hurt like.
MPA rating: R (for drug use and some language) Running time: 1:53
How to watch: In theaters