Priscilla
Written by Sofia Coppola, Sandra Harmon, and Priscilla Presley
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Starring Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen and Dagmara Dominczyk
Running time 1 hour and 53 minutes
Rating R for drug use and some language
Now playing in theaters

by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport and Editor in Chief

“Do you like Elvis Presley?”

Sofia Coppola’s film, Priscilla shares fleeting snippets of a young woman’s past and invites the watcher to draw their own conclusions.

It is difficult not to be aware of the being that was Elvis Presley. Despite being dead for forty-six years, he has taken on the status of a mythical creature à la Bigfoot. There are even proclamations of sightings that “The King” still walks among us. While only gracing planet Earth for forty-two years, Elvis’ prolific life has managed to be long lasting. His famed success, along with copious amounts of persistent marketing, continues to remind the public of his existence. While in the shadows of his early life was ingenue, Priscilla Beaulieu. Priscilla’s story has notoriously been treated as an afterthought. It may have been Coppola’s intention to bring Priscilla’s side into light, unfortunately for me this tale plays off as a stylized fever dream offering little insight into who this person is.

It should be said that keeping tabs on celebrity relationships are not really my bag. I am more into the art the person creates. When it comes to their personal life, well… it’s personal. I realize this is a loaded statement, for we live in a time where everyone’s business is essentially out for perusal, which leads to opinions and declarations as to what type of individual someone is. This is then cause for a determination on whether it is OK to enjoy a person’s particular work and welll… it’s complicated. Simply put: I enjoy Elvis Presley’s tunes, iconic style, and a few (very select) of his motion pictures.

During my childhood I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as I helped them run their produce business. My grandfather (Pop Pop), Richard Davis introduced me to Elvis Presley and he was enamored with the hip wiggling musical sensation, often referring to him as Elvis The Pelvis. If you were in the car with my Pop Pop there was no question - you were listening to Elvis. He would often sing along in the style of The King, and had the mannerisms down pat. When, at the age of fifteen, I lost my Pop Pop to cancer I was left devastated. I turned to Elvis to guide me through the grief, comfort me, and give me the illusion that my Pop Pop was still here. Throughout my life, I have continued to enjoy listening and learning about Elvis. I say all this because, even with my deep dives via biographies and documentaries into his past, I knew very little of Priscilla.

It was after seeing the 2022 Baz Luhrmann picture, Elvis, I became more intrigued with learning her story and who she was to Elvis. She had a couple big moments within that film, but was more or less relegated to a footnote. Those moments did have an impact on me though and when I got wind that Sofia Coppola was making a movie about Priscilla’s time with Elvis, I was pleased. Sadly, even with spending close to two hours in her timeline I don’t really know anything about her other than that she was trapped. Confined within the walls of Graceland due to her lack of parental control, naivete, and her influential, problematic, charismatic partner.

Several times during the flick a question is asked by Priscilla’s parents: “Why her, why my daughter?” in reference to the famed star’s interest in courtship. The two would come together in 1959 at the Air Force Base in Germany; Priscilla was fourteen while Elvis was ten years her senior. The initial meeting was anti-climatic and according to this depiction remained so until they would marry eight years later in 1967. They were drawn together out of loneliness and their shared love of home. Much like her parents, I questioned what it was about her that held Elvis’s intrigue beyond her being an innocent child (gross). Much of Priscilla offers a surface level depiction which in turn gives little understanding of who Priscilla was as a person. One of the reasons for this could be due to the story primarily being told from the memories of a teenager. The book in which this film is based on, Elvis and Me (written by Priscilla Presley with Sandra Harmon) was released in 1985; twenty-six years after her initial meeting with Elvis. Being that I am now forty, I feel that I would have a different perspective of what occurred during my teen years. I say this as it helped me bring into context, of what is shared onscreen and the way in which it is shown.

Everything about their relationship and her personality was controlled by Elvis down to the color of her hair; which had to be unquestionably black… just like mama. It left me with the feeling that Elvis more or less collected this person, dressed her up, and stored her like a doll on a shelf to await his return to his castle in Memphis for playtime. The amount of shots of Priscilla looking out the window of Graceland forlorn only solidifies the theory that to him, she was simply a toy waiting to provide amusement. If anything is clear, it is that Elvis would have benefited from therapy and Priscilla’s parents could have used a few lessons on child rearing. By allowing her to continue the relationship, they essentially placed her in a prison and without a doubt led to trauma that she most likely carries with her still.

There are many scenes in which the film was attempting to make a statement but is cut short and left up to interpretation. This has nothing to do with the acting itself as Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis both give commendable performances. Instead, there seems to be something lacking in terms of the script. Take, for example, the first time Priscilla visits Elvis in Memphis. After her long travel from Germany he offers her pills to help her sleep. She inevitably sleeps for two days straight and we are left to question: Did Elvis violate her? It seems implied, but it is never discussed further or given additional thought. Much of their time together seemed to be spent locked behind a door with little interaction from the outside. Like children, they partook in dress-up, watching movies and eating junk food. There were opportunities to say something compelling and instead it is lost within the fuzzy dream-like photography. I wanted to know what Priscilla was feeling when, before giving birth, she felt it necessary to put on full make-up, including fake lashes as if she was preparing for a photo shoot rather than to deliver a child into this world. Maybe the robotic routine of it all was a statement in itself.

In the end, what I could surmise was that Priscilla and Elvis really did not know one another. Neither of them were present enough in one another’s lives to have an understanding of who they were as individuals. This was a relationship that should never have been but due to a series of tragic choices was. This is something that I did not need to watch a movie to understand, which leaves me with the question: why was this story told? If anything is certain, the moment that Priscilla decides to go back to her natural hair color and ride out the gates of Graceland, this is when her life truly began and, well, I would have liked to have seen more of that story.