Priscilla
Sofia Coppola’s listless biopic of the wife of The King skirts around the rock’n’roll phenomenon while failing to sound a single credible note.
The adventures of Priscilla: Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny
It’s a brave director to step into the arena of the Elvis biopic. Or a foolhardy one. With Baz Luhrmann’s accolade-encrusted extravaganza still ringing in the ears – and Austin Butler’s astonishing interpretation of The King picking up a Bafta and a Golden Globe – now comes a different kind of film. For all its miscalculations, Luhrmann’s Elvis captured the pizzazz and sexual energy of the rock’n’roll phenomenon. With Priscilla, Sofia Coppola attempts a new angle by showing what it was like to be romantically involved with the star. Based on Priscilla’s own memoir Elvis and Me, it maintains a peculiar distance from its subjects, as if timorously turning over the pages of a family album. Likewise, as the young Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) tiptoes round the vast interiors of Graceland like a nervous kitten, Coppola stands back merely to eavesdrop on what must have been an extraordinary relationship. He was a god of the fanzines and a global sex symbol; she was a 14-year-old schoolgirl trapped on a US Air Force base in West Germany. She was also incredibly pretty…
Coppola’s Priscilla could have gone one of two ways. The director could have whipped up the sort of stylish, fanciful confection along the lines of her immensely diverting Marie Antoinette (2006); or she could have gone for a blisteringly intimate domestic drama – in the comfortable knowledge that her producer, Priscilla Presley, was dictating her side of the story. Perversely, Priscilla plays like an antidote to the razzamatazz of Luhrmann’s version, yet none of it feels remotely real. It’s as if Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi are shop window mannequins, deferentially modelling their telltale costumes, while hoping not to disturb the furniture. Jacob Elordi looks nothing like Elvis (or Austin Butler), although he has captured the vocal mannerisms of the singer, while Ms Spaeny is left with little to do but look star-struck, occasionally vexed, or a little like a young Jennifer Lawrence. At first, with her ponytail and sipping on a straw out of a Coca-Cola bottle, she looks the perfect little Priscilla. But soon things get pretty creepy.
Considering that this is based on the producer’s memoir, the real meat and vegetables seem to be missing. There’s little chemistry between she and Elordi (whose catchphrase, “I’m sorry, Baby”, quickly becomes irritating), and Priscilla’s parents are just conservative ciphers. Likewise, Elvis’s own coterie of interchangeable friends are barely sketched in, which leaves Spaeny and Elordi to command centre stage. But she’s just not interesting. A demure, petulant pretty face, she appears to have no fire in her veins, being merely a flickering shadow at the edge of the Elvis conflagration. Otherwise, Coppola’s unadventurous approach opts for a slew of obvious choices (such as the clichéd soundtrack), although the couple’s baby with its ear stud might raise a giggle.
N.B. There should be a statute of limitations imposed on the Elvis biopic, enforced for at least the next ten years – or until Jacob Tremblay feels ready to play him as an adult.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Domińczyk, Ari Cohen, Lynne Griffin, Joe Esposito.
Dir Sofia Coppola, Pro Sofia Coppola, Youree Henley and Lorenzo Mieli, Ex Pro Priscilla Presley and Roman Coppola, Screenplay Sofia Coppola, based on the memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon, Ph Philippe Le Sourd, Pro Des Tamara Deverell, Ed Sarah Flack, Music Phoenix and Sons of Raphael, Costumes Stacey Battat, Sound Stephen Barden, Dialect coaches Liz Himelstein and John Nelles.
American Zoetrope/The Apartment Pictures-Mubi.
112 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 3 November 2023. UK Rel: 1 January 2024. Cert. 15.
