I mean, hands up who became acquainted while still at school, romanced with, married, and had a baby with the biggest pop star on the planet?
As long as you don't expect the spectacle of the Elvis movie.. this is a different animal....
I was engrossed with her character - right from the early stages of the romance, her exhilaration was clearly palpable. But I did feel sorry for her (Elvis isn't the most endearing of people), and although she was evidently in love with him, the frustration of her mixed emotions must have been hard to bear.
Good soundtrack, and extra bonus too - no Elvis songs! :)
This biopic based on Priscilla Presley's autobiography is at times a meandering affair and perhaps deliberately so in trying to represent the boredom and isolation of the central character trapped in a bizarre relationship. Cailee Spaeny is absorbing in the title role as the schoolgirl isolated and lonely on an American airbase in Germany in the late 1950s. At a party she meets the already world famous Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) who is serving his time in the military. He takes a fancy to her and a strange, borderline perverted, relationship begins although Presley treats her like a doll and refrains from any sexual connection. Eventually Priscilla is allowed by her military parents to join Elvis at Graceland where this bizarre romance develops while she still attends a local school! She is introduced to drugs and sees little slips of temperament as Elvis occasionally exhibits uncontrollable anger and controlling behaviour. It all spirals towards collapse of course and the film focuses on this young girl's further isolation stuck in a mansion while her lover is on the road and apparently having affairs with famous actresses. This is a story that has a coming of age narrative drive but highlights the immaturity of a naive child obsessed with a handsome and famous man. But one mustn't forget that this is Priscilla's version of events and she also produced the film so some scepticism is required. Elordi as Elvis is downplayed to enable the narrative to be rightly directed at Priscilla and there are no Elvis songs on the soundtrack as these were denied for use in the film. Overall, an interesting story with an excellent central performance from Spaeny and it works as a story of coercion, control and misogyny but it leaves more questions than it answers.
I have to confess, I dislike Sofia Coppola movies and find deeply annoying the constant poor me feminist pity party theme and the incessant manblaming for anything bad that happens to women. Sofia, let us remember, is the daughter of famous multi-millionaire film director Francis. Hardly a Dickensian background, MASSIVELY privileged compared to most men or women. Much better film directors out there who never got the breaks.
but to the film: is it engaging, interesting, entertaining? No. It makes me rate the recent ELVIS film much higher actually. The 2005 TV miniseries is great too.
This is awful and tedious. Why? Well because Priscilla Presley is not interesting. She just happened to be the wife of an iconic talented artist, Elvis. She had not discernible talent whatsoever except for looking pretty, if that is a talent at all.
The usual predictable manblaming happens - Elvis is cruel, violent, on drugs, selfish, all the tickbox bad nastywasty man stuff. BUT would we have heard of non-entity Priscilla if he had not chosen her? Elvis had his pick of women and as he said, infidelity is hardly abnormal esp for pop stars.
And there is NO MUSIC. None. A deliberate choice by writer/director to take the focus off Elvis - BUT ELVIS IS THE FOCUS. Priscilla matters not. There is NO mention that her real father died in a plane crash when she was a baby so her Air Force Canadian-born father shown here is her STEP-father.
The best bits are the Memphis Mafia ones -I wanted to hop on their bus and watch that film, not stay with tedious Priscilla and Sofia Coppola's attempt to make her into a metoo martyr.
Watch the Baz Luhrmann Elvis film, not this Priscilla piffle, Or watch a documentary on Elvis, with music, and maybe the tragic family history - Lia-Marie dies aged 54 from heart attack brought on by weight loss bariatric surgery she had undergone. She was on opioids too. Her son, Elvis's grandson, killed himself at the age of 27.
2 stars. Just. A pointless forgettable film, but period settings are nice and the actors manage.