‘Priscilla’ tells a melancholy tale of the little girl who married a king
Priscilla
Starring Cailee Spaeny & Jacob Elordi
Directed by Sofia Coppola
PG-13
In wide theatrical release Friday, Nov. 3
Like the B-side to a smash hit record, Priscilla flips the familiar Elvis Presley story to put the focus on someone other than Elvis. Cailee Spaneny (most recently seen in HBO’s murder mystery Mare of Easttown) is a revelation as the young Army brat who meets Presley when she’s only 14. (“Just a baby,” he tells her, almost admiringly, when she reveals to him her age.) Euphoria hunk Jacob Elordi plays Elvis, early in his ascent to the top of the world as he begins to woo the wide-eyed 9th grader while still a G.I. stationed overseas in Germany, then finishing his military service and skirting her away to Graceland, his Memphis mansion.
As she’s done in other films (like Marie Antionette, Lost in Translation and The Beguiled), director Sofia Coppola explores the experience of another young woman in an off-balance power dynamic. It’s a curious (and yes, admittedly creepy) relationship as Priscilla is swept away by the singing superstar, 24 at the time, only to become increasingly dissatisfied as a virtual captive in his castle. At six-foot-five, Elordi is considerably taller than Presley was, and his Elvis literally towers over the diminutive Spaeny, more than a foot shorter; their scenes together make a striking visual metaphor for the disparity of a grown, worldly adult man with an adolescent plucked from the nest of home, family and familiarity.
Priscilla is an arty, elegant film, a moody, often melancholy exploration of the girl who left her initially skeptical parents and eventually became Presley’s wife in 1967, when she was 22. (It’s based on Priscilla’s own 1985 memoir, Elvis & Me.) We’re transfixed as young Priscilla settles into her new habitat, a garishly ornate, male-dominated kingdom of sycophantic hangers-on, frenzied fans and a pill-popping husband who introduces her to drugs and tries to groom her into his expectations. Elvis is a control freak who chooses her clothes, dictates her makeup and hair style, and forbids her to accompany him on tour or movie sets. “Keep the home fires burning,” he tells her, while Priscilla comes to suspect he’s carrying on affairs with his Hollywood costars—like Swedish bombshell Ann-Margaret and Nancy Sinatra, Frank’s daughter—and possibly other women as well.
Elvis also has a mean, petulant, unpredictable streak; “I’ve got my mother’s temper,” he tells her after impulsively hurling a chair her way, missing her head by inches. And he has, um, intimacy issues in the bedroom.
As Pricilla’s rock and roll fantasy unravels (leading to their divorce in 1973), we come to see that Elvis and ‘Cilla have something in common; they’re both prisoners. He’s shackled to his fame, while she’s his bird kept in a gilded cage, a little girl lost in a dream, staring wistfully out Graceland’s windows to see what’s on the other side. Priscilla is her story, certainly, but it also surely chips away at the fabled mythology of the complicated superstar with whom she spent more than a decade of her young life.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 