‘Priscilla’ Review: Cailee Spaeny is Pitch-Perfect in Sofia Coppola’s Demythologized Look at the Presleys | Venice

Sofia Coppola is back on the Lido once again for the first time since she presented Somewhere in 2010. One of the most anticipated titles in competition, the biopic Priscilla, based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 bestseller memoir “Elvis and Me” promises a good pairing with Baz Luhrman’s extravagant Elvis, and let me tell you, we are so glad these two films can coexist, however different they are.

Priscilla begins in 1959 near Wiesbaden, where the Texan Beaulieu family now lives as part of a German army base. The 14-year old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) is a lonely ninth grader who spends her time studying at a local diner. With little to no social life, she finds herself in a lucky set of circumstances, being introduced to no other than rock star Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), who’s stationed not too far. This is their first encounter: from a face on a vinyl cover, Elvis becomes flesh and blood, timid, hungry for real conversation. He likes Priscilla and invites her again and again. The intimate space of a house, be it the German mansion or Graceland, fosters party after party and a whirlpool of people, but everyone else disappears, as soon as Elvis suggests they find some alone time.

The intimacy between him and Priscilla is handled tastefully, especially in the early parts of the film, where the age gap seems insurmountable. His whispers of “baby” roll off the tongue naturally and her disbelief carries on in the snippets of high school life we get to see. We observe Elvis through the eyes of a teenager, his entourage, the set-up of his artistic and personal life, the messiness surrounding it all, and it’s glorious. What dreams are made of— parties, banter, fans, laughter—captivates Priscilla’s imagination and weighs down on the viewer who can never, unlike The King, forget how young she is. Priscilla covers the ten years between their first meeting and their separation, between the ages of 14 and 24, which is how old Presley was when they first met in Wiesbaden. This circular return feels liberating, especially since it’s enhanced by Coppola’s own devices of decoding the teenhood and young adulthood of women. Dressing up, putting on make-up, the concealed anger masking as obedience, all these acts and the gestures that go with them are crafted with a particular softness to the hands and face of Spaeny. Bringing Priscilla to the big screen with such rawness against the delicate image she presents significantly opens up the memoir and presents a satisfying continuation of it.

At the same time, the film is a disruption when it comes to Elvis’s mythologized presence. Even in the memoir itself, where Priscilla shares the rises and falls of their relationship and reveals intimate details about his manipulative, gaslighting side, they are always countered by an excuse on his behalf. Coppola’s film is not worried about making Elvis look bad—because he can’t and doesn’t!—but a major directorial decision is what shapes the film’s attitude towards him. Instead of keeping a voiceover as another layer of reflexivity, Coppola submerges the viewer straight into Priscilla’s world of wonder and impressions. 

Without the aid of psychologizing devices, the narrative is clear, chronological, and nothing but simple. In this way, the film swaps a reflection made from the distance of time for an immediacy of how it must have felt, being around and with Elvis for these ten years. What Coppola does best is to inhabit and enhance these worlds of young women as they change, to never conceal the instabilities that shape them. Rarely is Elvis seen in close-ups, unlike Priscilla, who is in every shot; we can easily tell who the protagonist is, and who the side-character is. 

Even within the context of moving to Graceland and leaving her family behind at a young age, the film passes no judgments. Even more, it invites the audience to participate in a love that is built in stages, to the point where purity is no longer a necessary part of it. It’s an idealist, romantic notion of a relationship—sharing a life with an idol of yours—but the film doesn’t frame it as delusional. Priscilla’s mounting pain is real, becoming more pronounced as rumors or actual affairs pile up, and in this pain, Coppola finds the kernel of liberation. A recurring motif sees Priscilla confronting Elvis about the rumors and tabloid-promoted affairs, and these scenes play out in a rather subdued way, mostly because of his insistent denial. It is the fault of  her suffering and his betrayal that Priscilla can finally claim her own space in the world, as a woman and a mother, respectively. A relatable tragedy, but a tragedy nonetheless.

Without a doubt, a lot is put on Cailee Spaeny’s shoulders, but her performance is pitch-perfect. Her glances always darting with the right amount of curious devotion, her pursed lips and short lines imbued with the feelings she cannot yet name, and most of all, the sense of destiny emanating from her whole being every time she comes close to Elvis. Jacob Elordi, on the other hand, does magic with the Elvis voice and gestures, but do not expect the flamboyant complexity of Austin Butler emulated here. In fact, Elordi is great at channeling his particular part of The King—his insecure, unstable, antagonistic facets, dripping with vulnerability.

Priscilla is a precious film, not only for its unsung history, but also an ode to all the women who can love and feel alone in that love at once; to those who are supposed to be quiet, who are told to shut up, or have had a chair thrown at them (like Elordi’s character does at one point). Upon her return, Sofia Coppola has made a rich and empathetic biopic that doesn’t need to sacrifice a man to shine a light on a woman.

Grade: A-

This review is from the 2023 Venice Film Festival. A24 will release Priscilla in theaters on November 3.

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Savina Petkova

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