Posted on 10/30/2023 12:29:41 PM PDT by Red Badger
Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny star in "Priscilla." Photo courtesy of A24
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Priscilla, in theaters Friday, makes a fascinating counterpoint to last year's Elvis. While not a hit piece, Priscilla explores the power dynamics at play in Priscilla Beaulieu and Elvis Presley's relationship.
In 1959, Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) was a 14-year-old living on the U.S. Air Force base in West Germany, where her father (Ari Cohen) was a captain. Terry West (Luke Humphrey) invites Priscila to come to Elvis' (Jacob Elordi) party while he was in the Army.
Terry sells Capt. Beaulieu and his wife, Ann (Dagmara Dominczyk) on allowing Priscilla to attend multiple parties. Then Elvis makes an appearance in uniform to win the Beaulieus' trust, showing how, little by little, he gained permission to fraternize with a minor.
Elvis does insist on waiting until she's older to sleep together, but he requests Priscilla move to Memphis with him. Then he takes a 16-year-old Priscilla to Las Vegas.
The Beaulieus are afraid to say no because Priscilla would never forgive them. Plus, she could still run off with Elvis, anyway.
While their reasoning is logical and family is no match for the allure of Elvis, one would hope a parent could come up with some kind of moderate, yet effective, way to protect their daughter.
In Memphis, Priscilla has to wait for Elvis while he films movies. He won't let her get an after-school job because he wants her on call for him.
The casting alone exaggerates the physical disparity between Elvis and Priscilla. Spaeny is 3 inches shorter than the real Priscilla and Elordi 5 inches taller than Elvis.
So he towers over her, and when he holds her arm firmly, it does not seem like Priscilla has the choice to refuse any request. At first, he's so charming that even his criticism can seem positive.
Priscilla tries on dresses for him, but he nixes any dress he doesn't like. Then he makes her over further with hair dye and eye makeup.
The film highlights the pills Elvis took and gave to Priscilla. We now know these are the same pills that ultimately led to Elvis's death, and they certainly weren't meant for a teenage girl.
Taking pills to sleep and more to wake up appears to heighten the emotions of the already fraught relationship.
Eventually, Priscilla starts to assert herself in the same passive-aggressive ways with which Elvis addressed her. She learns how to play Elvis' moods, so when she agrees to his demand, it becomes real and he changes his mind, anyway.
He does scream and throw things, but his immediate apology is almost scarier. There's no Oscar clip of the one moment in which Elvis went too far.
This is the portrayal of the attrition by which psychological abuse wears partners down. This subtle and sophisticated perspective feels like it comes out of personal experience for writer-director Sofia Coppola, though it could just be derived entirely from her empathy.
Every time Elvis becomes obsessed with a new interest, Priscilla has to be interested, too. It seems exhausting just to keep up for 113 minutes, let alone years.
Where other biographies focus on the career or romance, Priscilla focuses on this psychological dynamic. Fame and money enable it, but it's familiar to many non celebrities. too.
The specter of Austin Butler's portrayal of Elvis still looms large more than a year later. Elordi is playing the private Elvis, so it is different, but you can still tell who he is by the hair and his drawl.
He does practice his leg shake at home, but Coppola waits to even show Elvis performing until late in the movie after his 1968 comeback.
Covering the late '50s to early '70s, time passes in subtle ways. Even a montage shows Priscilla waiting in Germany from 1961 through her 16th birthday and into 1962 without aggressively hammering dates and demarcations of time.
The Elvis estate did not agree to license music for Priscilla but the use of other contemporary music ends up serving a substantial purpose. The use of other popular rock music is a good way to drive home that Elvis was great, but there was other great stuff, too.
Elvis lost a sense of the larger world and Priscilla was at risk of being consumed by this relationship. It's entirely possible to be narcissistic with far less objective success, but the celebrity industry consumed Elvis privately, as well as publicly.
The only Elvis-related music that appears is an instrumental of "Love Me Tender" and some clips of the '68 special and a bit of riffing at a concert.
It's no surprise a film by Sofia Coppola has fine attention to detail in the Graceland interiors and the period-authentic costumes.
The film isn't a bummer, either. It has a sense of humor about the extent of Elvis's popularity.
Priscilla Presley has told her side of the story over the years, and she was an executive producer on Priscilla, so she clearly approved.
Priscilla could make an interesting double feature with Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, not just because Priscilla is literally the perspective deliberately circumvented in Elvis during overlapping events.
Elvis was intentionally about the hype of Elvis. In contrast, Priscilla reminds viewers that there were actual people who had to go home together and figure out how to get along.
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Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
She’s All Groomed Up.
I think everything about Elvis has been done. Why don’t the Hollowoodies start doing some of this crap about the gloriously, peaceful lives lived by black rappers? The patron saints of loud noise and psychobabble.
Not an Elvis fan particularly, but I recognize that he had talent, that was badly mismanaged. Generally, could care less. Recently I was in a Zoom meeting with a client - FedEx and during a very boring segment I took to Google-earthing the airport in Memphis, the FedEx HQ, and the surrounding area to the west and there is Graceland. Switch to the street view and see what a trashy area it is located in. The estate itself looks rough, but you can as the problem was that Elvis didn’t buy enough land to control the areas surrounding Graceland. On the Graceland property itself there is the house and a lot of adjoining buildings that look like corrugated metal pole barns. He may have been a lot of things, but he was no real estate developer.
ping
I’m pretty sure that Pricilla would agree to this day... That Elvis was the best thing that every happened to her.
Not an Elvis fan particularly, but I recognize that he had talent that was badly mismanaged. Generally, I could care less. Recently I was in a Zoom meeting with a client - FedEx and during a very boring segment I took to Google-earthing the airport in Memphis, the FedEx HQ, and the surrounding area to the west and there is Graceland. Switch to the street view and see what a trashy area it is located in. The estate itself looks rough, but you can as the problem was that Elvis didn’t buy enough land to control the areas surrounding Graceland. On the Graceland property itself there is the house and a lot of adjoining buildings that look like corrugated metal pole barns. He may have been a lot of things, but he was no real estate developer.
This portrayal of the couple sounds as though it would have made for an interesting biography in book form.
I mean BOOK-book, not just in a Kindle format.
I just finished an authorized bio of Elizabeth Taylor by
Randy Taraborrelli. Entertaining and enlightening, as much as one could expect for a late superstar.
Randy has also published excellent bio books of Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, Michael Jackson all of which I have read, plus some 20 more bio books I have not yet read.
I really liked the Sinatra book. I learned so much about that New York area world, decades before my time.
As I understand it, at the time he bought Graceland, it was a very rural area. He could’ve purchased 400 acres worth of surrounding land, but he wanted only the 13 acres parcel the house sat on.
One of Elvis’ granddaughters; Riley Keough, is now legally in charge of much of the remaining Elvis estate. This is how his daughter, Lisa Marie, wanted it.
If Riley is smart, she will do something similar to what you just described, buy up much of the surrounding area and rebuild it. I’ve heard many folks say they are now afraid to visit Graceland, because it looks like the Ghetto, and the people nearby don’t look trustworthy.
"In the Ghetoooooo!"
Lol!
I thought it was “In a Yugo”?
And they drove with pride...
Priscilla’s book is called Elvis and Me.
I may be taking a peek.
As you know, used books can be found at deep discounts.
That was an all timer.
“Priscilla Presley has told her side of the story over the years, and she was an executive producer on Priscilla, so she clearly approved.”
Then I’ll bet it’s full of falsehoods and lying by omission.
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