Unruly ‘Elvis’ shakes up Film Festival
CANNES, France — Elvis Presley famously never got the overseas touring career he deserved. He played only three venues outside the U.S., all of them in Canada in 1957, well before reaching peak superstardom. Instead of going international, he remained a fixture of the International Hotel in Las Vegas from 1969 to 1976, performing show after sold-out show until just a year before his death. Keeping Presley tied to Vegas was just one of the many machinations of his ruthlessly exploitative manager, Col. Tom Parker, who, it’s now widely believed, was afraid to leave the U.S. after having immigrated there illegally from the Netherlands years earlier.
That sad history is unpacked at some length in “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s unsurprisingly extravagant new movie about Presley’s life, art and career, which had its world premiere Wednesday night at the 75th annual Cannes Film Festival. Presley may never have gotten to perform for his fans in France, but Cannes gladly rolled out the red carpet for Luhrmann and his stars, Austin Butler, who makes a credibly charismatic Elvis, and Tom Hanks, who makes Col. Parker every inch the self-serving scumbag. Defensive and self-pitying, Parker narrates this long and gaudily overstuffed tale of a King and his Kingmaker, arguing — unpersuasively — that he isn’t the villain that history has made him out to be.
The problem is that while Parker is very much the villain of “Elvis,” Luhrmann has also gone out of his way to make him something of a
co-protagonist.
It’s a shame, because in many other respects, “Elvis” feels like an intuitive and sometimes even ideal match of filmmaker and subject. Luhrmann doesn’t do much by halves, and here his flamboyant stylistic excesses are very much of a piece with Elvis’ own. The performance sequences crackle with live-wire energy, even when Luhrmann is drawing them out or even slowing them down.
And so we see Elvis’ career triumphs, his meteoric ascent to the top of the charts and his proud defiance of the conservative-minded squares who tried to keep his devilish dancing under control. We see his tempestuous marriage to Priscilla (a sympathetic Olivia DeJonge); his neglect of his daughter, Lisa Marie; and his years struggling with addiction and depression, most of which play out in a sprawling Vegas penthouse suite that looks more like a prison in every shot. To complain that “Elvis” is basically a compilation of musical-biopic conventions is a bit like complaining about a greatest-hits album; it also misses one of Luhrmann’s strengths as a filmmaker, which is his ability to suffuse cliches with sincerity, energy and feeling.
“Elvis” wouldn’t have been a bad choice of Cannes opener this year, though I suspect that Warner Bros., which has high hopes for the movie when it’s released next month, wanted to avoid the harsher critical scrutiny that often comes with an opening-night reception.
And so “Elvis” landed late in the festival and played outside the main competition, which has produced a number of strong entries as it enters its final stretch.