Priscilla (2023)

4 Stars (out of 4)

Love You Tender

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Sofia Coppola's Priscilla is like the "B"-Side to Baz Luhrmann's Elvis (2022), a "Don't Be Cruel" as compared to a "Hound Dog." Luhrmann's film was flashy and long and full of enhanced/modified biographical details. Told from the point of view of Priscilla Presley — who mostly stayed home while Elvis was out having adventures — Coppola's vastly superior film is small and quiet, deeply poetic, more of a delicate impression than a biographical document. If it has any flaws at all, it will be due to comparisons with the earlier film, although they do make fascinating companion pieces. Certainly it's hard to hold a candle to Luhrmann's Oscar-nominated Elvis (Austin Butler), while Coppola's Elvis (Jacob Elordi) is absurdly tall and mainly only looks like The King in profile.

Cailee Spaeny is heart-stopping as Priscilla, beautiful as porcelain and with a sweet whisper of a voice that dissipates like cotton candy. She's a military brat, living in Germany with her officer father (really a step-father) and mother, spending her time sitting glaze-eyed in school, sipping Cokes and looking at magazines. It's 1959 and Elvis Presley happens to be stationed there as well. They are introduced, and he's immediately smitten, while she is flattered, dazed, starstruck. The movie doesn't say, but their ages at this point are 14 and 24.

Elvis waits for her to finish high school, then moves her into Graceland, puts her in the college of his choice, approves (or disapproves) her hairstyle, makeup, and clothing choices, and makes her wait for him while he's away shooting movies. But, fortunately, Coppola does not depict Elvis as a monster. He's an artist, a performer, perhaps the most famous person in the world, trying to figure out how to be and what to do next while under heavy scrutiny (and while under the thumb of Colonel Tom Parker, unseen here, but played to perfection by Tom Hanks in the Luhrmann film). He may even have a "mother/whore" complex, repeatedly declining to have sex with Priscilla, but sometimes caught having affairs with starlets. He loves Priscilla, but his peculiar, unique worldview makes him unable to truly connect with her, to fully see her.

Enough about Elvis. This is Priscilla's film. Up front, it has a great deal to say about power dynamics between men and women. Priscilla is increasingly subject to rules and regulations, and most attempts to assert herself are quickly and finally shot down. (Elvis forbids her to get even a part-time job, because he wants her to be available when he calls.) Even when they fight and Priscilla prepares to leave, Elvis breaks down and coaxes her to stay. And she relents. She's caught in a trap, and she can't walk out. Coppola plays up the tantalizing aspects of freedom just out of grasp with her non-Elvis song choices, many of them from non-Elvis time periods. (It opens with a gorgeous use of the Ramones' "Baby, I Love You.") Yet, again, while Coppola handles the relationship spectacularly, demonstrating that it's a mess made by two people, this is not entirely about a relationship. It's about Priscilla's feelings.

There's a striking moment early on just after she moves into Graceland. She wanders around, looking at things, touching things, unsure of what do to, and perhaps beginning to be aware that there is about to be a whole lot of nothing to do coming up. Her existence is divided up into times waiting for Elvis to return, and hoping he'll notice her once he does. (His rowdy entourage, vying for his attention, is ever-present.) As she eats dinner, the entourage makes jokes that she doesn't get, and the camera lingers in close-up on her face as she pretends to laugh along, but is really miserable. She's even rudely thrown out of the business office, where she tries to strike up a friendship with the women working there. Coppola specializes in this kind of character, specifically Marie in Marie Antoinette and Johnny Marco in Somewhere, characters who are trapped in worlds not of their making, and whose privilege does not help in the slightest. They are all bored, and while boredom doesn't sound like much, it's an essential problem of human existence. How we decide to pass our time helps define who we actually are. If we cannot pass the time at all, then who are we?

Coppola may be the greatest filmmaker alive of moments and impressions. She is not a storyteller, not primarily. She creates worlds in which we can observe, and understand, as characters navigate their everyday doubts, feelings, and desires, mostly in ordinary moments. She's so gifted that she can get us to empathize with characters who might seem permanently out of reach, i.e. the wealthy, the elite, and the privileged. (They are human, too.) Huge plot twists and moments of hysterics or histrionics are rare in Coppola's films. The greatest change can happen in the smallest moment, like that private whisper at the end of Lost in Translation. And so, while a film like Luhrmann's Elvis — and, indeed, most other ordinary biopics — are about what happened. Priscilla is about what it felt like to be there.