Review of the Film Priscilla: A Vicious Footnote to the Elvis Myth

Which is a difficult film Priscilla. Complicated, complex, layered. You can call it whatever you want. You can admire him because he is a real Sofia Coppola, who with films like Marie Antoinette (2006) in The Beguiled (2017) specializes in wrapping questions about elusive, growing women in velvety sandpaper. Such as: was fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu a willing victim when a soldier invited her to meet Elvis, ten years her senior? Young girls that age can be many things: sexually curious, worldly wise, depicted as temptresses by art history, transformed by mass media into a symbol of femininity. And even if that’s true, and times were once different, they’re fourteen-year-old girls first and foremost. Children. Lolita is fascinating, but she bears no guilt.

Biopic

Priscilla. Director: Sofia Coppola. Starring: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi. Length: 113 minutes.

And what that soldier did, named Terry West in the movie, wasn’t he just recruiting an underage girl for an adult man? He is modeled after a certain Currie Grant who appears in the book Child Bride (1997) claimed that Priscilla promised him sexual favors if he introduced her to Elvis. That’s not in the movie. Too much gossip and backbiting. But even without that, that velvety sandpaper starts to chafe. And that won’t stop for the entire movie. The tone is set in the opening shot in which Priscilla’s red-painted toes toss through rose-red carpet. It looks like freshly ground meat. Priscilla is the most sinister, necrophiliac film Coppola has ever made. You would have to call it a form of zombie feminism.

Also read
an interview with director Sofia Coppola and leading actress Cailee Spaeny about ‘Priscilla’

The only thing that’s not so easy is to say whether that’s because of or in spite of the film. Coppola is always careful. Her films are like young women who have learned to remain silent. Is she thereby keeping an eye on Priscilla Presley, whose autobiography was the basis for the film? Or does she indirectly protect Elvis against allegations of pedophilia and grooming? Or does her film reveal all of this in a whisper-subtle way? The casting of Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla, who looks much younger than Priscilla in photos, and Jacob Elordi as Elvis, towering much taller over child bride Priscilla than in real life, suggests the latter. He overshadows and overpowers her, until he actually does so in a hotel room in Las Vegas.

Priscilla is a vicious footnote to the Elvis myth. We get to know him as a master manipulator. And so the film called Priscilla is again about Elvis, seen through the eyes of the underage girl he molded into his bride. We learn relatively little about Priscilla herself, except that she took karate lessons when she left Elvis. If only she had done that sooner.

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2024-01-02 15:26:38


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