Priscilla review – subtle and sensational | Little White Lies

Priscil­la review – sub­tle and sensational

26 Dec 2023 / Released: 05 Jan 2024

Words by Hannah Strong

Directed by Sofia Coppola

Starring Cailee Spaeny, and Jacob Elordi

Woman reading a magazine on a sofa, wearing a red dress.
Woman reading a magazine on a sofa, wearing a red dress.
3

Anticipation.

An uphill battle, coming so soon after Elvis, and following the lacklustre On the Rocks.

4

Enjoyment.

Coppola, as always, goes her own way – subtle and sensational.

5

In Retrospect.

A lilting love story, dark and deep and clear-eyed.

A star is born in Sofia Cop­po­la’s bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma based on the rela­tion­ship between Priscil­la and Elvis Pres­ley, with Cailee Spae­ny deliv­er­ing a remark­able performance.

In a 2016 inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair, Jen­nifer Gar­ner was asked about her mar­riage to Ben Affleck, which end­ed the pre­vi­ous year. He’s just a com­pli­cat­ed guy,” Gar­ner said. I always say, When his sun shines on you, you feel it. But when the sun is shin­ing else­where, it’s cold.’ He can cast quite a shad­ow.” This could be equal­ly applied to the rela­tion­ship between Priscil­la and Elvis Pres­ley, as depict­ed in Sofia Coppola’s bio­graph­i­cal drama.

A film­mak­er who has always shown an acute inter­est in the inte­ri­or­i­ty of teenage girls, and the real­i­ty of oth­er­wise pic­ture-per­fect romance, Cop­po­la seems unique­ly suit­ed to tack­le the sto­ry of the woman behind the man. As a lone­ly Amer­i­can teenag­er liv­ing on a US air­base in Ger­many, Priscil­la Beaulieu (Cailee Spae­ny) meets Elvis Pres­ley (Jacob Elor­di) for the first time at a party.

He’s a tall, charis­mat­ic pres­ence, who ini­tial­ly mis­takes Priscil­la for a high school senior. When she tells him she’s 14, he lets out a low whis­tle. You’re just a baby,” he mur­murs. But this doesn’t stop Pres­ley from pur­su­ing Priscil­la, and the teenag­er from falling head over heels. It’s a fairy tale in Priscilla’s eyes; a sweet, hand­some man has come to res­cue her from her iso­la­tion and take her back to America.

Cop­po­la nev­er tries to jus­ti­fy the rela­tion­ship between Elvis and Priscil­la – we see Priscilla’s par­ents ago­nis­ing over the deci­sion to allow her to leave for Mem­phis, or for­bid it and risk los­ing her all the same – but she does under­score the sig­nif­i­cant age gap between the two. While he’s mulling over career deci­sions, she’s doing home­work. Soon enough Elvis is advis­ing Priscil­la how to dress and telling her she should dye her hair and wear more make­up. He cre­ates the per­fect rock star’s girl­friend, and Priscil­la – alone in his world – has lit­tle option but to cooperate.

Group of people surrounding a limousine with a woman visible through the window.

She becomes an out­let for him to offload his emo­tion­al bag­gage, con­fess­ing his hopes and dreams but nev­er ask­ing what Priscilla’s are. When she enquires about maybe going to work in a bou­tique part-time, he quick­ly for­bids it, stat­ing she has to be around the house in case he needs her. When Elvis buys Priscil­la a pup­py after she moves into Grace­land, how is she sup­posed to know she’s expect­ed to walk and to heel too?

Yet we do see what it was that Priscil­la loved about him, even if the film is rel­a­tive­ly chaste (a late scene seems to pull its punch­es about a mar­i­tal sex­u­al assault which was detailed in Priscilla’s mem­oir). Elvis is gen­er­ous and atten­tive, so long as he’s nev­er ques­tioned. Only as she grows up does Priscil­la realise she needs more than he’s will­ing (or per­haps able) to give.

There’s some­thing com­fort­ing about fairy­tales because we know how they end. I’ve always thought biopics func­tion in a sim­i­lar way – they’re often a sto­ry we’ve known all along, told slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly. The real beau­ty of Priscil­la is its del­i­cate por­tray­al of the all-con­sum­ing fire and flood of first love, and what hap­pens when you grow up, and begin to realise the fairy­tale doesn’t always have a hap­py end­ing. And that’s okay, too. Fairy­tales are fan­tasies, after all. The sun goes on shin­ing when you step out of some­one else’s shadow.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

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