Movie Review – Priscilla

Priscilla (2023)
Written and directed by Sofia Coppola

I became aware of Elvis in the late 1980s. Having been born in 1981, I arrived a handful of years after the music icon was found dead, a result of drug addiction & a life not generally lived well. I have faint memories of a rerun of John Carpenter’s Elvis TV movie, starring Kurt Russell as The King. I also remember seeing tabloid news programs talking about Elvis sightings, guessing this was around 1987, the tenth anniversary of his passing. I have never felt any connection to the singer. I know his catalog of songs like anyone of my generation does. They were just in the pop cultural air. I’ve never watched any of his films. I’ve never sat and listened to his albums.

Priscilla Presley was a figure I took longer to become aware of. I was a white boy in the South raised by narrow-minded people, and she was a woman; Elvis’s wife was probably how I first knew her. I was very aware when their daughter, Lisa Marie, married Michael Jackson. I think I first knew who Priscilla specifically was when I saw The Naked Gun. We got it from the local video rental store, and one of my parents commented that she was Elvis’s wife. We have this film many years later, and I can say I know more about her life.

In 1958, 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) was living on an American military base in Germany when she was approached by an officer who asked if she would like to meet Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). Her parents were reasonably wary of this. Why would a man in his mid-20s want to hang out with a child? Eventually, they capitulated, and thus, the relationship began. At 17, she reconnected with Elvis and was signed into his custody, moving into his home at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee. Elvis pushed his drug addiction on Priscila, a melange of uppers and downers he used to poorly regulate himself. The girl was kept as a doll in his playhouse, and he allegedly never attempted sexual contact with her during this time. Only in 1967, when Priscilla was 23 years old, did he finally propose and marry her. They would have one child, Lisa Marie. By 1973, their marriage would collapse, and Priscilla would leave Elvis as he became mired in prescription pill addiction. Elvis would be dead four years later.

Sofia Coppola has made an extremely beautiful movie. It certainly gives a view of Priscilla I had never seen before. The same with Elvis. The performances given by Spaeny and Elordi are very muted and realistic. I prefer this far more than Baz Luhrmann’s gross & bloated maximalist mess that was Elvis. Coppola is a very talented technician. She has a clear vision of what she wants and executes that vision without a doubt. Yet. Yet. I didn’t really feel anything when the credits rolled. I have thought about Priscilla in a very ambient, liminal way since. In fact, it made me wish I had watched a well-made documentary about her because I can’t say I ever fully understood who these people were.

I don’t think Sofia Coppola is a lousy filmmaker. I note that since Lost in Translation, I felt less and less emotionally connected with her work. Maybe that is because of the female-centered eye of the pieces? But I found The Virgin Suicides and Lost to be exceptionally emotionally moving. Marie Antoinette. Somewhere. The Bling Ring. The Beguiled. Seeing them all and each one left me feeling the same as Priscilla. I appreciate the visual craft on display, yet it is emotionally vacant. 

I’m a fan of slow-moving, contemplative cinema, though. I find filmmakers outside of the States do it best, though. Perhaps because Elvis and the Americana around him don’t hold a place in my mind, I couldn’t click with this piece. The first half had my full attention. Seeing Priscilla outside Elvis’s immediate hold made her feel real. But in the second half, it feels like a holding pattern when she’s locked up in his dollhouse. Her character never became anything. The distance Coppola puts between her camera and the subject was alienating, not in a way that I found meaningful. When Priscilla finally left Elvis at the end, I didn’t understand how she had come to that point. I get intellectually why she did, but the film didn’t make me feel why she did. 

I don’t think anyone is wrong if they put this on their favorites list for 2023. I would like to find a deep dive into Coppola’s work that helps crack some of what she’s doing. Maybe I might connect with it; perhaps I won’t. She certainly has a clear vision and puts that on film.