Priscilla review: Sofia Coppola paints an elegant portrait of a troubled marriage
Cailee Spaeny gives a breakout performance as Priscilla Presley, while Jacob Elordi shines as a psychologically abusive and manipulative Elvis
Film Reviews Sofia Coppola
Starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, Priscilla is adapted from Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, Elvis And Me, and chronicles the whirlwind life of Priscilla Presley as she goes from small-town army brat to global style icon and American legend. Tracing Priscilla and Elvis’ romance back to its humble roots on a U.S. Army base in West Germany, the film invites audiences to grow up alongside Priscilla, witnessing her starry-eyed infatuation with The King fade into a much harsher, crueler reality.
Especially in the wake of last year’s Elvis (director Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy, bombastic portrait that painted the King as a flawed but tragic American legend), director Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla makes for a viscerally vulnerable viewing experience that’s less interested in perpetuating the mythology around Elvis Presley than in bringing the honest, often unsavory underbelly of Priscilla and Elvis’ relationship to light. In the lexicon of American pop culture, Elvis has attained near-deific status—a reverence that leads to the frequent glossing over of his very real, very dangerous flaws.
Even Priscilla herself starts out under the spell that allowed Elvis to so easily woo the nation. Taken with his seemingly down-to-earth and sweet-talking personality, it’s not until years into their relationship that the reality of life married to a rock star truly begins to reveal itself. It’s a harsh lens on a beloved figure, but one that’s necessary in truly understanding her story—Coppola’s willingness to buck expectations and challenge convention in order to finally do right by Priscilla is as gutsy as it is gratifying.
Priscilla was just 14 years old when she met Elvis and her childlike innocence is slowly but surely chipped away the more time they spend together. Their 10-year age difference is a key factor in establishing the power imbalance that would define their relationship—and a deeply uncomfortable truth that’s further emphasized through the casting of Spaeny and Elordi.
At a whopping 6-foot-5, Elordi’s Elvis looms over Spaeny’s 5-foot-1 Priscilla—a very literal but effective indicator of just how in over her head Priscilla is when it comes to their relationship. Spaeny’s height is hardly the extent of her effectiveness, though. As Priscilla, she’s the quiet, beating heart of the film, a gentle and starry-eyed young woman whose dreams eventually morph into hellish nightmares. Though the nature of their relationship means there are precious few moments where Priscilla is allowed to assert herself, Spaeny still finds subtle ways to give Priscilla an ever-present inner strength. Most of this comes by way of her eyes—heavily lined in Priscilla’s signature winged makeup, her silent but penetrating gaze speaks to the immense depth that assures her soft-spokenness is never mistaken for a lack of backbone.
As Elvis, Elordi doesn’t swing for the fences in emulating the King’s vocal tics or other affectations. Though he still has Elvis’ famous voice, his performance is more interested in interrogating the manipulative, power-driven side of Elvis that develops after a lifetime of being told you’re the most revelatory force in music history. We can understand why Spaeny’s Priscilla falls for Elvis, while also seeing red flags from the beginning. But just as Elvis’ charm and fame are able to win over the impressionable young Priscilla, Elordi channels that same charm to lull the viewer into underestimating the extent of his cruelty.
In terms of pure narrative, Priscilla is somewhat lacking—it’s a very linear, cut-and-dried approach to storytelling more interested in illustrating gradual, creeping change than massive altercations and set pieces. At times, this can leave the film feeling insubstantial and aimless, but the meagerness of the story is a deft, deliberate stroke by Coppola to further immerse the viewer into the reality of Priscilla’s life at Graceland.
In contrast to Elvis’ riotous on-set antics, dazzling house parties, and many torrid affairs, Priscilla’s life is steeped in the same superficial decadence, but utterly lacking in any kind of entertainment or substance. She’s a human piece of set dressing, primped and posed to be the perfect, beautiful wife, but never allowed to have a life of her own, lest she forget to “keep the home fires warm” on the rare occasion that Elvis deigns to pay her a visit.
The candy-coated prison that was Priscilla’s married life is further illustrated through Coppola’s signature eye for aesthetics and affinity for engaging with feminine rituals: extended sequences of nail-painting, hair-dyeing, and outfit-picking abound, but even those indulgences are always overseen by, or in service of, Elvis and what he might like. Production designer Tamara Deverell populates the world with plush carpets, porcelain statues, and all manner of gaudy decor, while Stacey Battat clothes Priscilla in flowy, babydoll dresses—almost always in Elvis’ required shades of blue.
Sitting in near-perfect contrast to the image of Elvis Presley that’s been cultivated in modern Americana, Priscilla is an elegant, introspective, achingly lovely portrait of a pop culture icon. Unafraid of shattering rose-tinted glasses, Coppola’s film is fierce in its subtlety, relying on Spaeney’s breathtaking performance and the inherent tragedy of Priscilla’s story to deliver a film that’s equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking.
Priscilla opens in theaters November 3
44 Comments
Oh so we’re normalizing child brides now, cool.
G_d, I hate you, Barsanti!
Huh? I’m all for shitting on Barsanti but he didn’t write this review. Also, it sounds to me like the movie is pretty critical of their age gap.
I was starting a new topic.
Unfortunately you can’t tell Priscilla’s story without engaging in, and interrogating, that very unfortunate and creepy reality, The Kinja Caffeine Spider.
I legit snorted. Well done.
Digging the use of Josh Gad as an epithet.
I took his name in vain. Sorry.
lol
hahahahaha the epitome of modern AV Club is screaming Barsanti’s name after reading something he didn’t write. Barsantiiiiii!!!!
I’ve assumed this would be a spiritual sister film to Sofia’s Marie Antoinette (barely legal young girl swept up in arranged marriage to royalty, and its discontents). I’m pretty excited to see Sofia’s take.
That’s the exact same take that I had. Coppola is great at showing loneliness and emptiness surrounded by opulence.
Saw tonight. It was incredible. Surprisingly emotional.I think we see a lot of movies about abuse but this one really seemed to nail a lot of the nuance. There seems to be a lot of critiques that Elvis was just a man of his time, and modern moralism is incorrect. I don’t think Coppola cares, dating children is inherently wrong, even if it was more normalized in the 60s. You leave with a lot of respect for Priscilla escaping the gold canary cage (very much mirrors some parts of marie antoinette in the power of “girlish” things, with Priscilla as American royalty)
This sounds like a very bad movie, based on what is in this review that is actually about the movie and not biographical information about the people the movie is about.
By AV Club standards – admittedly, a pretty low bar these days – this is a shining piece of film criticism. It isn’t 90% plot summary with a few casual comments about whether or not the reviewer liked the movie, at least.
whoa whoa I think we have different ideas of what a review is. I thought a review is when the author details all the scene beats of an episode and then tries to be funny in the stray observations. Are you saying that’s not what a review is?!?!?!?!
I’m looking forward to her next film, which will be about how terribly hard it is being a rich, privileged, attractive white women.
*White
Hi Lauren!! The problem with the movie is that it should have been titled “Young Priscilla” or “The aging of Priscilla”. The unvarnished truth is that the film stops at the wrong moment in her life. There are 50 years uncovered, starting with her Dallas period, the Edwards period (with what that meant for Lisa), then the birth of Navarone, her Naked Gun years and lastly the opening of Graceland, which is her greatest contribution, having garnered, as it has, 2.24 billion to the Memphis economy since it opened in 1982. She is the reason 22 million people, from Heads of State, and of Government, to Princes and future Kings, Nobel Prize laureates or just people of sundry professions, decide to go TOTALLY out of their way to tour Graceland. But does the movie acknowledge that?
In all seriousness…why should anyone outside that immediate area care about an Elvis theme park?
At this point does anyone still wear rose colored glasses about what kind of person Elvis was, or at least what he became? This sounds good but I’m not expecting to learn anything new about his appetites and behaviors. So I’ll leave everyone with my favorite take on the man (‘scuse me)…
It’s like with Donald Trump, bfred—it’s one thing to “know” he’s an abusive, corrupt, creepy sexually predatory steaming pile of shit, and quite another to have our collective noses rubbed in it on an hourly basis.
I think because Gen X gets lumped in with the boomers so often, it’s just assumed we have very similar tastes, but as far as I can remember, most of us couldn’t stand him.
I hate getting lumped with boomers.
I think it depends one the particular Gen Xers musical tastes.
He certainly wasn’t the cultural phenom he was for the Boomers.
Yeah as a Gen X’er he was squarely in the “oldies” category by the time I started listening to music. Some I loved, Chuck Berry at the front of the line, but Elvis always felt largely irrelevant to me. Except Suspicious Minds, my favorite of his, and even that I first became aware of thanks to Fine Young Cannibals.
Yeah, but we’re also the generation that grew up with Fonzy and the entire 50’s revival as kids. I loved Sha-Na-Na and I hated hippies with a passion. Whereas the 50’s greaser look was cooler and even the punk guys (think the Clash circa London Calling and a lot of others) were into that way more back then.Also I think a lot of is over blown but the most entertaining read about Elvis is the Albert Goldman book which is viciously funny.
Don’t forget The Cramps!My kids grew up listening to Bikini Girls with Machine Guns
My girls love the Cramps as well: and as a huge Big Star fan I boringly remind them that Alex Chilton produced them as well
“That’s right kids, THE Alex Chilton!”“Woooow!”
They only say “wow” because their lame old man keeps playing some stupid song called “Alex Chilton” by a bunch of drunks
A stone classic, they’re lucky to have you.Also, I saw them open for Tom Petty and you’ve never seen a more hostile reception for an opening act. Didn’t help they were so hammered they could barely play and Westerberg was incoherent. Good times.
I read “Trouble Boys” and they were deliberately being obtuse jerks on that tour: at one show they broke into Petty’s dressing room and stole all their wives dresses…which they came out wearing to perform “Breakdown”Other than Johnny Thunders, I can’t think of another artist who was able to pull defeat from the jaws of victory so often.
Petty himself said Westerberg was, in his words, “a pussy” who had all the talent to be a real success but deliberately sabotaged himself at every turn. Hard to argue with that.
I’m fully Gen X and I loved Suspicious Minds! It was my favorite song to sing loudly (and badly) when I was alone in my car.My only real imprint of James Brown came from Rocky IV. But I do remember his crazy crackhead days only because his trial was all over the news.Stevie Wonder was always relevant because I secretly loved “Part-Time Lover” when I was in middle school.
or his appetites.
I want to appreciate her work, but…does anyone else find her films to be an off-putting drag?
It’s promising that the only negative takes I’ve seen have been from people who don’t seem to know it’s a true story, complaining about Priscilla being a “weak character with no identity outside her relationship.”
legit, I think Coppola recognizing the vulnerability of Priscilla by leaning into some hardcore aesthetics of girlhood, while also preserving Priscilla’s own experience is the right way to approach the story without reducing her solely to a victim.
I wonder how much harm was caused by all the millions of dollars of Elvis money she gave to the Church of Scientology 0ver the decades.
Imagine is she wasn’t preyed on by a socially acceptable pedo what her life could have been like! I imagine scientology would have had nothing to do with her life, but yes, keep telling us how wonderful Elvis was.
“Them sonsabitches just wan’ mah money.”
Inflation, war in the Mideast, and Elvis! Is it 1983 again? I guess we’ll have a Republican president next year.R.I.P Paul Volcker!
More like ‘77. Snorted and starred anyway.
Read another article saying that Lisa Marie thought that the script made her father look like a creepy predator. Unlike all the other famous 24-year old men who started relationships with 14-year old girls, apparently this was the pure one.