The last time Sofia Coppola made a movie about a teenage royal living in a rococo palace that turned out to be a luxurious prison, it was in 2006, and the movie, “Marie Antoinette,” was a stylized dream of history: the story of the young queen as a naive and isolated rock star.
Coppola's new film dramatizes the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley, and the parallels to the previous film are there if you want to see them. This time, however, Coppola goes in the opposite direction, working with a casually meticulous docudrama authenticity.
Director: Sofia Coppola
Writers: Sofia Coppola, Sandra Harmon, Priscilla Presley
Stars: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen
In the 17 years since “Marie Antoinette,” he has grown as a filmmaker: His storytelling now has an organic detail and emotional precision that grips you. Last year's Elvis Presley biopic was called "Elvis." The book on which the new movie was based was “Elvis and I.” But Coppola's film is simply called "Priscilla," and that brings us to something essential: that the film, while it could be described as a love story, will not be told from a dual point of view.
This is the story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley. It's about how she met Elvis, at her house near the American military base in West Germany in 1959, when she was 14 years old. It's about how she was drawn, despite her parents' protests, directly into her orbit: because he was charming and sexy and famous, because he promised to love her tenderly and who was going to say no to him? Elvis Presley? It's about the honest affection they shared, rooted in the fact that they were both, literally or in spirit, overgrown children.
It's about how after a short time, Elvis moved Priscilla to Graceland, where she was treated like a precious object and given everything she wanted, except the freedom to make her own decisions, choose her own clothes, play with a dog in The grass. , or a lot of anything else. It's about how she grew up to be a kept woman, watching Elvis fly off to film his movies and having affairs with his co-stars. And it's about the true love she felt and the hope she nurtured that her connection could become something vital and soul-nourishing, rather than what she turned out to be.
Coppola, who wrote and directed “Priscilla,” tells this story with his eyes open, so that we are caught, for a time, in the otherworldly trance of what it would mean to have the biggest star on the planet choose you to be. your princess. The film takes us directly into Graceland (you really feel like you're there), showing us what happened, just as it happened, without sugarcoating or frills. Early on we see that much of what happens between Priscilla and Elvis is a heightened version of what defined so many romantic couples of the '50s and '60s, when men ruled and women's roles were subservient, outlawed, and restricted.
The bold thing Coppola does, given that we're used to seeing sophisticated biopics that weave the lives they show us into dramatic arcs, is to present the rise and fall of Priscilla and Elvis's relationship as a diary, one that simply flows forward. . in a kind of objective Zen style, without ever inventing anything. At some moments you will wonder: Where are the arches? But the arc is the entire movie: the story of how the exuberant, soft-spoken rock 'n' roll idol whom Priscilla thought she was falling in love with evolved into a pathological personality, though perhaps she always was one. The dramatic question driving “Priscilla” is: Are we watching a deeply flawed and ultimately painful relationship? Or are we watching a vibrant, innocent young woman give herself over to a mirage?
As Priscilla, Cailee Spaeny has an eager eye and keen spirit, and she strives to portray the teenage Priscilla as a typical American girl of her time, courteous and decorous, yet with a taste for adventure. After all, she lives in the world after Elvis Presley remade it! Priscilla's father is stationed at the US Air Force base in West Germany (Elvis was drafted into the army in late 1957, just under two years before the film begins), and when she leaves sits at the counter of the base's soda shop, we can feel his restlessness, his desire for something to happen. So when a soldier friend of Elvis approaches her and invites her to go to the king's house, she is embarrassed but eager.
Her parents don't want her to leave. In some ways, they already know what they're dealing with (though in other ways they have no idea). When she arrives at Elvis' house, there is a party and she instantly sees him on the couch; She can't lose her hair, which is like the pompadour as a crown.
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