I’m usually easy to please when I’m at the movie hall. Once I’ve settled in with caramel popcorn, my phone turned off, I’m ready to be transported into a different world and be entertained or educated. Priscilla, directed by Sofia Coppola, had me looking at the time every 15 minutes, wondering when the snoozefest would end.
If we didn’t know that the lovestruck young girl on screen was going to be the wife of the King of Rock & Roll, it might have been hard to keep us in our seats. Coppolo’s film can, at best, be dismissed as a disjointed slideshow of Priscilla Presley’s memories. It is a long, dire warning about the kind of boy no girl should fall in love with and does not even try to attempt the nuances of Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 film, Elvis.
Coppola assumes she need not present the singer-dancer-performer-heartthrob the world is already familiar with. It is her intention that we only see Priscilla’s Elvis Presley — a controlling, disrespectful, manipulative cad. It is not the Elvis we know, and it’s hard to see what our teenage protagonist sees in this older man if we can’t see the dazzling musician he happens to be. And no, there are absolutely no Elvis numbers (or even covers) for the length of the movie.
Coppola goes to lengths to preserve Priscilla’s childlike innocence, at least until the birth of their daughter Lisa, lest we forget that Priscilla was only in school when she met Elvis. She is dressed in pristine frocks of pastel colours and dainty prints throughout, a stark contrast to the man she is infatuated with — a flaming red flag in a black leather jacket. Perhaps Priscilla was clairvoyant when she admits to Elvis that her favourite song is Heartbreak Hotel.
Cailee Spaeny, who plays Priscilla, is a whole foot shorter than Jacob Elordi (Elvis Presley) and the exaggerated height difference also serves to exaggerate the looming terror that is Elvis in the movie. In his more vulnerable moments, it’s hard to believe that he’s not simply being manipulative. His fits of rage followed by hollow apologies show us how Priscilla is stuck in that classic cycle of abuse. Elvis takes a young girl straight out of school to seduce her, ply her with pills and wrap her up in riches. He dictates how she can spend her time and what she should be wearing. He is often literally “grooming” his young prisoner in her gilded cage — an idea Coppola clearly wants her audience to conclude.
What’s even more horrifying is that Priscilla’s parents sit back and simply allow it to happen. After bleating objections about how she can’t attend his parties at night, they allow her to be escorted by strangers, then they allow him to whisk her away to Graceland on a first-class ticket, and even acquiesce to their daughter moving in with a now-famous star and finishing school somewhere else. It’s never quite clear why Elvis’ friend in the army is so insistent about taking this young girl he doesn’t know to a party; establishing probable cause is not what this movie does best. Priscilla’s saviour complex manifests early enough as she first insists that “He just lost his mother and he’s still grieving. He trusts me!” and then later, more heatedly, “He needs me, mom!” And of course, her military dad and old-fashioned mother just let her follow her underage heart into a big bad leather bed.
Coppola’s characterisation lacks any depth. While seeking to narrate the story of her innocent damsel in distress, she only loses empathy for her wronged heroine, for she is unable to establish a foundation for one of the most famous romances in the history of Western pop culture. One wants to shake Priscilla to make her see reason while also grinding one’s teeth at the unidimensional deliberately-dishonoured Elvis on Coppola’s screen.
As a romance, the movie is disastrous. As a biography, it is grossly one-sided. As an existentialist piece, it is more absurd than reflective of the human condition. Elvis’ disparaging drawl, “What’s a beetle? … goddamn, crawling around” might have been the best dialogue in 110 minutes. It draws from you a chuckle of relief that The Beatles lie around the corner and this ordeal will soon end.
In fact, the young Priscilla in Luhrmann’s Oscar-nominated Elvis exuded a confidence that one could imagine Elvis might have been captivated by. And later, her rageful exit from his life makes sense too. Both scenes are in sharp contrast to Coppola’s borderline pathetic protagonist overcome by a Victorian haplessness. It takes Priscilla to be pregnant with Lisa to suddenly grow up and gather self-confidence and dignity. Perhaps she really has been disappointed too many times. Or perhaps being with child makes her come to herself. The bathos of her breaking free plays out to the backdrop of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You, which is ironically apt for being a song made more famous by Whitney Houston for a movie where the aftermath of the central relationship lingered on for its audience in a way Coppola’s Priscilla never will.
Perhaps we could better use our time to pick up Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me. Perhaps much was Lost in Translation.
