Film review: Priscilla

Cailee Spaeny (right) outshines Jacob Elordi's Elvis in this biopic, which is firmly focused on Priscilla Presley.

Priscilla (R, 113 mins). In cinemas now.

Directed by Sofia Coppola.

With an extreme close-up of feet with exquisitely painted toenails walking across shag-pile carpet, followed by another of false eyelashes being carefully placed on to mascara-lined eyelids, Sofia Coppola introduces her character Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny playing her role impeccably) and the image-obsessed world she lived in.

Priscilla is the story of how a teenage Priscilla met Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) and spent the next 10 years with him. In the film, Elvis is almost a bystander, while Priscilla is in the spotlight. Priscilla Presley wrote the book the film is based on and says the film is “right on”.

In 1959, Priscilla, a ninth-grade student, aged 14, moved to Germany with her father (Ari Cohen), an army officer, and housewife mother (Dagmara Dominczyk). Fifties-era decor, dress, cars and conventions are captured perfectly, with a great soundtrack. Frankie Avalon and the Ramones stand out. Don’t go to see Priscilla expecting Elvis’s songs. They’re not there.

A young army officer spots Priscilla alone in a milk bar and asks her if she’d like to go to a party at Elvis’s place. She’s star-struck. Fans are everywhere. Reluctantly, her parents let her go. Priscilla, uncertain, excited and nervous, takes us along with her. We feel her vulnerability.

Jacob Elordi convincingly plays Elvis as a melancholy, temperamental narcissist plagued with self-doubt. Ten years older than Priscilla, he’s slightly bemused by Priscilla’s youth, but drawn to her. They’re both away from home and he’s sad and lonely because his mother has recently died. She falls in love.

Priscilla and Elvis’s daughter Lisa Marie (1968-2023) read the script before filming began and disliked it intensely, telling Variety that it made her father look like a manipulative predator. Sofia Coppola responded that Elvis is depicted with sensitivity and complexity. Both views are justified, and consequently, the film has more depth than Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis (2022).

Returning to the USA, Elvis sends for Priscilla and she flies to join him at Graceland, parental permission having been granted after Elvis undertook to send her to finish her schooling nearby. But nobody would have been aware of how he kissed her tenderly in the bed she shared with him for several years, apparently saving anything more for what he called the right time.

The film doesn’t touch on this, but the delayed intimacy may possibly be explained by rock’n’roll star Jerry Lee Lewis’s 1957 marriage to his 13-year-old cousin Myra in nearby Mississippi. Although legal there back then, it was while on tour in England that his career was ruined when news of the age of his bride broke.

While with Elvis, Priscilla endures the controlling behaviour of Elvis’s father Vernon (Tim Post), deals in her way with Elvis’ own controlling side, tolerates his pill-popping and stands by him despite his womanising. Interesting times.

Highly recommended.

Movies are rated: Avoid, Recommended, Highly recommended and Must-see.

• For the final time in their current location, Starlight Cinema managers will give a free ticket to Priscilla to the first person who brings in an image or hard copy of this review.

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