At first glance, ‘Priscilla’ seems like a picture-perfect romance film. If you paid any attention to the movie, however, you might go as far as to see that it’s a story about a renowned singer grooming a teenager a decade younger than him. The film is a depiction of a memoir written by Priscilla Presley in 1985, “Elvis and Me.”
The movie starts off in a German diner in 1959. Priscilla Beaulieu is seen sitting with a milkshake as she’s approached by a service member in the Air Force who claims he is friends with Elvis Presley, Currie Grant. With her parents’ permission, Grant takes Priscilla to a party on the base, where she is eventually introduced to Elvis.
Priscilla’s parents are reluctant to allow Elvis to start courting their daughter due to their age difference and his fame. After describing her as, “mature for her age,” and stating that he’d treat her well, he manages to convince them to approve of their relationship. Two years of little to no contact pass as his time in the Army ends. When they finally reconnect, Elvis asks Priscilla to come to his estate in Tennessee. They take a trip to Las Vegas, where he coerces her into gambling and abusing prescription medicine.
After she hesitantly returns to her home in Germany, Elvis helps her convince her parents to let her move to Memphis and complete her senior year at a catholic high school under the guardianship of his father. Although Priscilla has fun with him while he is present at his family’s estate, she feels isolated whenever he has to leave for Los Angeles to shoot for his films. Struggling to keep up with her grades in school, she has to cheat on her final exam to graduate.
When the media starts spreading rumors about Elvis’ infidelity with his costar, Ann-Margret, Priscilla decides to make an impromptu visit to Los Angeles to confront him about the affair. He threatens her to go home, stating that he needed “a woman that understood him.” Even after they get married and have a child, their relationship continues to go downhill. They begin to get into more arguments, and Priscilla is forced to sit on the sidelines as she watches him flirt with other women.
During a meeting with Elvis in a hotel room after his performance in 1973, he makes unsavory advances towards Priscilla as he is clearly shown inebriated. Shortly after, she informs him that she plans on filing a divorce. The film ends with Priscilla saying goodbye to his grandmother and the staff at his estate, driving away from the home as a crowd of fans loiter around the property gates.
This is far from the first movie that Sofia Coppola has directed. With titles such as “Marie Antoinette,” “The Bling Ring” and “On the Rocks,” ‘Priscilla’ is an amazing addition to her portfolio. Her father is Francis Ford Coppola, which led to her acting debut as an infant in “The Godfather,” a movie that he was the director of.
Although Coppola is a nepotism baby, she described the budget for the film as “strained” to the point where she considered raffling off a pickleball game with the leading male, Jacob Elordi. Coppola initially intended to shoot scenes for the film in Los Angeles, but she wasn’t able to due to the limited budget. She managed to save money by reusing footage from a Cartier commercial that she filmed in 2018 featuring an actress who looked like Cailee Spaeney.
Although Priscilla herself states that she was initially concerned about the movie, she later describes it as “right on.” After the movie debuted at the Venice International Film Festival, she was there to witness the seven-minute standing ovation that it had received from the attendees.
