New & Now: Priscilla
Sofia Coppola offers a subdued look at one of pop culture's most complicated love stories.
In a time when a small but very vocal subset of movie audiences expect filmmakers to clearly state that depiction does not equal endorsement, and that the events in a particular film don’t reflect their personal values, it’s a bold move for Sofia Coppola to make Priscilla.
Based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir of her marriage to Elvis Presley, it does not treat the circumstances of how they met as a shocking reveal. It’s not a pointed indictment of Elvis, or of the many adults who enabled their relationship (including, to a point, Priscilla’s own parents). I haven’t read Priscilla’s memoir, but it seems unlikely that, given it was written in 1985, she had done a lot of analyzing of the situation and realized the inappropriateness of it, certainly not at the time it was happening. Coppola treats it the same way: it was what it was, there’s nothing to be gained from belaboring the point and emphasizing what the audience should already know.
While it’s not a response to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (for one thing, it was already in pre-production when the earlier film was released), Priscilla is an interesting flip-side to it. Whereas Elvis is a dazzling, frenetic spectacle, Priscilla is muted, almost somber. Priscilla is a supporting character who doesn’t get much to do in Elvis, but here there’s barely more than a minute or two when she’s not on screen. In Elvis, the core relationship is between Elvis and Colonel Tom Parker, but in Priscilla Colonel Parker is never seen at all, while still being the phantom taskmaster who keeps Elvis on a tight leash, as he in turn keeps a similar leash on Priscilla. The brief moment Elvis is shown performing, it’s confined to a tiny television screen, emphasizing that that aspect of his life is distant and removed for Priscilla. It’s not about him, it’s about her.
The film opens in 1959, when 15 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny, one of the most convincing adult actors playing a teenager I’ve ever seen), is living with her family on an Army base in Germany. Reserved, soft-spoken, and deeply lonely, she’s the perfect recipient for the attention of an older man, and here it’s not just any run-of-the-mill chump, it’s Elvis Goddamn Presley himself1 (Jacob Elordi), who just happens to be stationed at the same military base. She accepts an invitation to a party at Elvis’s house from a friend of his, under the guise of “just hanging out,” but it’s clear that this has all been orchestrated, right down to the reassurances that the friend and his wife will drive her there and make sure she gets home before bedtime.
Too dazzled by being in Elvis’s presence, Priscilla doesn’t realize that she’s the fly to his spider2. Elvis is a good old-fashioned boy, who talks about how much he misses his recently deceased mama and doesn’t try anything more than a kiss when he and Priscilla are alone in his room. She’s special, you see, different from the other girls, and though it occasionally seems like Elvis is reading from a script3, Priscilla is hooked, so lovestruck that when she’s not with him all she can do is wander around in a melancholy daze.
Elvis uses that same charm on Priscilla’s parents, who, astonishingly, agree to let her travel overseas to visit him, even though she’s not even out of high school yet4. Priscilla gradually moves into Graceland, and finds it a bizarre, stifling experience. When Elvis is away filming a movie, she’s only allowed to leave the house to attend school. When he’s home, he’s constantly in the company of his boisterous friends, and the only time Priscilla can get him alone is in their bedroom, where Elvis insists she remain “pure” until their wedding night, compartmentalizing the numerous on-set flings he has with his female co-stars. As he oversees her hairstyle, makeup, and clothing, Priscilla is a human dress-up doll for Elvis, kept on display in his house and away from where anyone else can see her, while he plies her with pills so that she can stay awake when he’s awake, and sleep when he sleeps.
Forbidden from visiting friends or bringing them to Graceland, Priscilla finds herself just as lonely as she was before she met Elvis. The time between Elvis’s visits home is a mind-numbing blur spent mostly wandering around the house, doing her hair and makeup, and waiting for Elvis to call. Here, of course, is where Sofia Coppola excels as a filmmaker, in giving a sort of magical feel to the trappings of young womanhood. There’s something oddly soothing about watching Priscilla carefully apply false eyelashes before leaving for the hospital to give birth to her first child, or how a mist of hairspray gently settles and sparkles in her hair. Lacking agency anywhere else in her life, Priscilla puts all her time and effort into maintaining a flawless appearance, ensuring that she lives up to Elvis’s feminine ideal even when he’s not around.
Priscilla is a fascinating movie in its restrained, almost detached style. We don’t come away knowing who Priscilla Beaulieu Presley is so much as who she was then. The film covers the day she met Elvis up through the day their marriage ended, and not a minute more5. It also lacks the theatrics of a typical relationship drama. Save for Elvis’s occasional childish tantrums, there are no Marriage Story-esque big blowout scenes in which Priscilla gets to act as the audience surrogate to rattle off Elvis’s many sins. If anything, it’s a bit anticlimactic: time, distance, Priscilla’s growing need for independence, and Elvis’s questionable lifestyle choices cause the slow death of their relationship, not any one huge, spectacular event.
While the part isn’t rich with dialogue, Cailee Spaeny brings a lot to her performance just in her long, wary silence. Priscilla’s demure personality and good manners make her a perfect victim of Elvis’s manipulation — even when she correctly complains about his careless treatment of her, she’s clearly embarrassed about it, and unable to meet his gaze. Even at her lowest, loneliest moments, she’s reluctant to express anything that might be interpreted as ingratitude for her good fortune.
While not as showy a performance as Austin Butler in Elvis, Jacob Elordi gets what Priscilla (or any teenage girl then, really) would have found attractive about him. Despite his fame, initially he’s gentle, even vulnerable around Priscilla. Yes, it’s probably a put-on, and yes, obviously Elvis was a creep and a deviant, and Priscilla was almost certainly neither the first nor the last underage girl he latched onto (just his favorite, since she was the only one he married). Nevertheless, It’s Priscilla’s story, told from her perspective, of a time that probably already felt like a fading dream by the time she wrote her memoir. She’s not unlike a fairytale princess wandering through her castle, wondering if the man she loves is going to next appear to her as a prince or a beast.
I was 15 in 1987, so the equivalent of Elvis for me would have probably been Bono, and you’re goddamn right I would have moved into his house if he had asked me to.
Elordi is more than a foot taller than Spaeny, making their interactions with each other subtly unsettling from the very beginning.
A script that many women, myself included, are quite familiar with.
Times was different then, folks, I don’t know what to tell you.
Sorry to the folks who were hoping the movie would touch on her co-starring role in the Naked Gun franchise.