Priscilla Presley’s Emotional Reaction to Sofia Coppola’s New Elvis Film

You could not suppose there’s a necessity for 2 large Elvis Presley films in back-to-back years, however it’s exhausting to think about a pair of filmmakers with sensibilities as completely different as Baz Luhrmann, who directed “Elvis” (2022), and Sofia Coppola, who got here to the Venice Film Festival on Monday to debut “Priscilla,” in regards to the rocky marriage between Priscilla Presley and her well-known beau.

Luhrmann is a maximalist, a grasp of shock-and-awe spectacle by which each new body is a confetti-crammed occasion. Coppola is extra within the intimate: Her settings could also be as luxurious as Luhrmann’s, however the younger girls she finds residing in these gilded cages are a celebration of 1, determined for actual connection.

That’s a sense Coppola has explored in films like “Lost in Translation” (2003) and “Marie Antoinette” (2006), and “Priscilla” finds the filmmaker on the peak of her preoccupations. “I don’t know why I keep coming back to it,” Coppola joked at a news convention on Monday after she was requested about her frequent depictions of girlhood. “Hopefully, I’ll grow up soon.”

Adapted from the memoir “Elvis and Me,” Coppola’s movie will get underway when Elvis, despatched to Germany throughout his navy service, meets Priscilla, the daughter of a navy officer newly stationed there. She’s remoted and homesick, craving for the life she left behind within the United States. Despite being a famous person, a besotted Elvis finds he can relate.

Priscilla can also be 14, a truth the movie doesn’t shrink back from. “Ninth grade? You’re just a baby,” the 24-year-old Elvis murmurs once they meet at a celebration, although that age distinction hardly slows his pursuit: At occasions, he even appears to treat Priscilla’s virginity as her main trait. “Promise me you’ll stay the way you are,” he says as he proceeds to show the poor lady’s life the wrong way up, ultimately whisking her from Germany to Graceland, plying her with uppers and sleeping tablets, and insisting that she preserve their yearslong relationship secret whilst he’s publicly photographed in romantic clinches with the likes of Nancy Sinatra and Ann-Margret.

As in “Marie Antoinette,” when our younger protagonist is dropped within the lap of luxurious and finds it awfully lonely, Priscilla has every part she thought she might ever need and nonetheless feels an absence. The star she discovered so alluring is commonly merciless and manipulative, telling her what to put on and the best way to act, and reminding her each time she balks that hundreds of thousands of girls would eagerly take her place. To assert herself, Priscilla has to get inventive: Since Elvis needs her to decorate solely in stable colours, each time he does one thing upsetting, she retaliates by sporting a vivid print.

Priscilla is sensitively performed within the movie by Cailee Spaeny, an up-and-coming actress, whereas “Euphoria” star Jacob Elordi has the even trickier job of taking part in Elvis a 12 months after Austin Butler’s uncanny re-creation made him an A-lister. Elordi acquits himself simply high-quality, and it helps that Coppola isn’t all for staging splashy musical numbers: During the few glimpses we do get of Elordi’s Elvis midsong, he’s all the time filmed from the again. That aesthetic alternative neatly steers “Priscilla” away from Luhrmann’s film (which was way more all for Elvis the performer) and additional grounds the movie in Priscilla’s perspective. If he’s heading onstage, all it actually means is that he’s leaving her behind.

The film may lack large musical scenes as a result of Presley’s property was unwilling to assist the movie or authorize the usage of his songbook. I’m not shocked. Luhrmann’s hagiography was estate-approved and portrayed the singer because the harmless pawn of his craven supervisor, Col. Tom Parker. “Priscilla” exhibits how manipulative Elvis himself may very well be. This isn’t any puff piece: It’s a warts-and-all portrayal of a charismatic man who pulled a younger lady into his orbit after which wouldn’t let her out.

Though Priscilla attended the Venice news convention in assist of the movie, she didn’t sit on the dais with Coppola and her forged, as an alternative watching from the entrance row of the viewers. But when a journalist requested what moved her most about “Priscilla,” Presley herself took the mic.

“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you and about your life and about your love,” she stated. “Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework.”

The second that moved her most was the ending, Presley stated. It’s the second simply after their marriage crumbles, when Priscilla lastly summons the power to face on her personal two toes.

“Yes, I left, and it wasn’t because I didn’t love him,” Presley stated. “He was the love of my life. It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that.”