There are few directors as gifted as Sofia Coppola when it comes to capturing that very specific view of a world glimpsed through the bars of a gilded cage. First with the five-star hotel ennui of Lost in Translation (2003), then the ribbon-bedecked prison of privilege in Marie Antoinette (2006), and now the dark side of a fairytale in Priscilla. Coppola evokes the aching loneliness and isolation experienced by women who simultaneously have everything and nothing.
In this case the woman is a girl. Priscilla Beaulieu – a superb Cailee Spaeny, wholly convincing both as the child and adult Priscilla – is just 14 when she first meets rock’n’roll superstar Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) at a party at his home near a US army base in West Germany. She is, unsurprisingly, smitten. And who can blame her? Elordi taps into an intriguing, quixotic cruelty beneath the glittering charisma; his Elvis is a darker, more dangerously complicated creature than Austin Butler’s sunnier version in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. Normal life, and the daily grind of school, lose all meaning once Priscilla has experienced the solar flare of Elvis’s attention. Everything, from the Beaulieu family’s utilitarian, army-issue home to the quality of light in the rooms that suffocate her, seems duller and darker when Elvis is not around.
Coppola isn’t a showy director – there’s never a sense that her ego is gatecrashing the story – but she is a distinctively empathic observer. And she is not always given credit for just how complex and layered her films can be. Here, she skilfully pulls off the tricky manoeuvre of positioning the story through a dual perspective. First and foremost it’s Priscilla’s tale – the film is adapted from Priscilla Presley’s memoir, Elvis and Me, a storybook romance still wrapped up in the corsetry of 1950s ideas of femininity. But Coppola counters this with a modern-day perspective, jolting us out of the period, as in Marie Antoinette, with anachronistic music choices, such as Dan Deacon’s late 00s electro party banger The Crystal Cat, and permitting the uneasy realisation that we now have a word for the kind of relationship that is unfolding on screen, and it’s not a pretty one.
The film stops short of labelling Elvis as a groomer and Priscilla as his victim. Coppola is more interested in the knotty intricacies of the relationship than buying into binary ideas of guilt and innocence. Plus she’s way too classy to stoop to finger-pointing and sensationalism. But she is very astute when it comes to the power structures surrounding Elvis, the man and the star. They influence all his relationships, not just the one with Priscilla. There’s a terrific scene in which he takes his teenage girlfriend, 10 years his junior, shopping for clothes and brings his support system of interchangeable, crowing yes-men along for the ride. The boys bellow their appreciation of each new outfit she tries on, but we catch their fleeting, nervous glances towards Elvis, gauging his opinion. It doesn’t pay to disagree with him. He can, and does, withdraw his approval on a whim, as a means of keeping his inner circle in check. And he adopts the same approach with Priscilla.
The couple are both, the film suggests, products of a very specific time and place. Priscilla, raised on 50s magazines offering tips on how to please and keep your man, tries to shape herself into Elvis’s very set ideal of womanhood. Here, the film’s costume choices speak volumes. The teenage Priscilla is buttoned into fussy tailoring; her stiletto-heeled court shoes are always a half size too large. She looks like what she is – a child playing dress-up in a role she doesn’t fully comprehend. Her gradual emancipation plays out in her wardrobe choices. When she finally embraces the patterned prints that Elvis is so vehemently against, you almost want to cheer.
Elvis, meanwhile, has grown up in a world that has rigidly delineated gender roles. Women, in his experience, are uncomplaining, indulgent homemakers, and that’s what he expects from Priscilla. His male role models – his father, his manager, Col Tom Parker – tend to be more overbearing and controlling. Interestingly, Parker doesn’t appear as a character in this picture – a curious omission perhaps. But his malign presence and influence is evident everywhere, not least in the restrictions that initially keep the relationship out of the public eye. One way or another, life for Priscilla is all about navigating the demands of dictatorial men. When she drives through the gates of Graceland one last time, to the soundtrack strains of Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You, she leaves the little girl behind and is reborn, her own woman at last.
