“Behind every great man is a great woman”
Sofia Coppola is no stranger to the loneliness that comes with fame – as the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, she’s lived in the spotlight her entire life. Her films are deeply personal, visually charming stories of isolation, trapping her characters in liminal spaces like the Park Hyatt Hotel (Lost in Translation, 2003), the Chateau Marmont (Somewhere, 2010) and Versailles (Marie Antoinette, 2006).
In the case of Priscilla (2023), our heroine is a prisoner in Elvis Presley’s Memphis estate, Graceland, caught up in a dreamlike romance with the King of Rock that began in 1959, when she was just 14 years old. Played by Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla is invited by a friend of Elvis (who was 24) to one of his parties during his military service in Germany, where her family is stationed.
Based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, Priscilla aims not to slander Elvis but to tell the story of their relationship from the perspective of a starstruck teenage girl. Coppola pulls the viewer in, introducing us to a pensive, heartfelt young Elvis. At the party, he confides in Priscilla: He misses his mother. He misses America. He tells her to meet him upstairs. And like something out of a Wattpad story, a few scenes later he’s in Priscilla’s living room, asking for her father’s approval. The film follows the couple’s relationship until their divorce in 1972. Priscilla was 28. “She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in such an amplified world,” Coppola explained to Vogue during production of the film in 2022.
Who better to convey the allure of Elvis Presley to the twenty-first century teenage girl than Euphoria star and heartthrob Jacob Elordi? “He’s so charismatic, and girls go crazy around him, so I knew he could pull off playing this type of romantic icon.” Coppola told Vogue. Elordi towers over Spaeny, exaggerating the difference in age and power between their characters.
In typical Coppola fashion, pastel colours and soft focus are used to highlight the dull moments of fame. While an off-screen Elvis tours across America and shoots blockbusters in Los Angeles, Priscilla (complete with beehive hair and heels) repositions herself on the untouched furniture, reading magazine stories of her lover’s Hollywood affairs. Interspersed between these dull scenes are vibrant sequences in which Elvis and Priscilla are together. When it’s good, it’s great. There’s literally fireworks. But when it’s bad, he’s popping pills and throwing a chair at her head.
While Priscilla bears a striking resemblance to Marie Antoinette (2006) in terms of character and aesthetic, I don’t think it’s grounds for criticism. Sofia Coppola has found the formula for making visually breathtaking and emotional films about coming of age in the shadow of fame, and Priscilla is proof.
In the wake of Luhrmann’s flashy Elvis (2022), Coppola’s film offers an understated and vulnerable perspective of the King’s relationship, one in which the viewer is his confidante, keeping the fires burning, trapped in the teenage dream of every girl in America.