“Elvis”: a breathtaking biopic that has been long overdue on the big screen

THEME

Is it his childhood as a little white boy born in a town in Mississippi (inhabited mainly by blacks), a childhood cradled by the gospels of the Pentecostal Church that his mother attended? In any case, at nineteen, Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) is already a vocal phenomenon of a caliber never heard in a white singer, with to accompany him, a swaying hips and a hallucinating sex appeal. Only problem, the notoriety of the young singer is still limited. Everything changes when he meets a man who calls himself Colonel Parker (Tom Hanks, unrecognizable), both a marketing genius (he’s going to make Elvis an interplanetary star) and a hell of a bitch who, to pay his game will not hesitate later, to “sell” his “foal” to the highest bidder, even if it means letting him fall apart.

The life of the greatest icon of rock’n’roll, his ups, his downs, his road trips, his rebellions, his loves and his legendary concerts traced through the eyes of a man with the double face of “spiritual father “And” predator “: this is what recounts, over thirty years, this flamboyant and energetic biopic, the first on the big screen, since the death of the King which occurred in his Graceland property, in Memphis, Tennessee, on August 16, 1977 , at the age of 42.

POINTS FORTS

Crazy about music in general and Elvis Presley in particular, the Australian director Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, Gatsby the Great) had long revolved around the King. A biopic? Yes but how ? With whom ? And from what angle? Because there was no question for him of being satisfied with a biography told flatly! After years of cogitation, he came up with the idea of ​​revisiting the life of the darling child of Memphis through the prism of the gaze of his manager, the strange, mysterious and indispensable Colonel Parker, the one who built the “legend” of the singer Elvis and who, a few years later, was largely responsible for the “decline” of the man that this same Elvis was, behind the idol. A single person responsible for the upward and downward curve of an extraordinary career: Luhrmann had his common thread. He started to write…

Another squaring of the circle to solve for him: find the interpreter of the title role! On the big screen, no one had dared to risk it. The Australian filmmaker begins the auditions. It is a phone call from Denzel Washington (whom he does not know personally) that saves him. The actor tells him about a young guy with whom he played in the theater and who seems fabulous to him. Austin Butler, who then only performed small roles, arrives. He is a native of California, but it’s all there, the look, the gaze, the wild sensuality, the footwork and especially the voice. Because Luhrmann does not want to hear about playback. It will take young Austin three years of hard work to become the perfect Elvis. He collapsed the day after the last day of filming, which earned him 8 days in hospital. But the result is there, breathtaking.

Breathtaking also is the performance of Tom Hanks who took on the role of Colonel Parker. Unrecognizable, the actor interprets with rare subtlety the different personalities of a man of whom we still do not know today whether he was, for Elvis, a father or an executioner, a genius manager or a slaver.

SOME RESERVATIONS

Baz Luhrmann connoisseurs know it: the filmmaker tends to “clip” his films too much. He does not escape his cute sin here. You have to wait a good ten minutes so that, after a start in overdrive, Elvis finds a less frantic pace, which lets you savor both the percussive finesse of the dialogues and the magnificence of the filming, and also the performances of the two stars of the film, Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.

We can regret that the script does not give a more important place to the wife of the King, Priscilla Presley, interpreted by an Olivia Dejonge, moreover, a little too “crazy”.

ANOTHER WORD…

Eight years. It took director Baz Luhrmann eight years to complete one of the most anticipated biopics in the history of cinema because it traces the dazzling and tragic career of the most legendary singer in the history of the United States. The result is up to all expectations, which will both delight fans of special effects cinema and delirious images, satisfy fans of the King (their idol is restored there, intact, in its madness, its genius, his seduction, his extravagance, his magnetism, his incredible sense of rhythm, his hips, his sensitivity and… his dependence on “Colonel Parker”), and which will also, in the same movement, fascinate lovers of American years 1950 to 1970, those which saw this country fight against racism and emerge from its conservatism.

A little too long, this flamboyant Elvis (2h39)? A little too emphatic? Maybe. But how to quibble in front of a film which offers such a sumptuous setting to the greatest legend of rock, and which allows a young interpreter of 31 years, Austin Butler, to access star status? Given its reception by the public at the last Cannes Film Festival where itwas thrown out of competition (twelve minutes of ovation), Elvis should be a hit at the box office. Stunning and thrilling!