One choice forced on director Sofia Coppola could have sunk her adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s Elvis and Me before it ever set sail. Sony BMG, which now owns the rights to Elvis Presley’s music, refused to cut her a deal for the use of The King’s music for the film, perhaps because they just backed Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic last year. Without Elvis’ music, how can you tell the story of his relationship with his wife, whose favorite song was “Heartbreak Hotel”?
Instead, Coppola makes the lack of “Heartbreak Hotel” or “Jailhouse Rock” or the apropos “Suspicious Minds” into one of Priscilla’s greatest virtues. On stage, Elvis became a Dionysian demigod, and as mythology tells us, the gods do not play by the same rules as us puny humans. But without the songs to perform, Elvis (Jacob Elordi) is just another dude — an incredibly good-looking and charismatic dude, to be sure, but it’s easier to see the red flags when he’s no longer divine. That’s how 24-year-old Army private Elvis Presley seemed when Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) met him when she was a 14-year-old high school freshman at the American high school on a military base in West Germany. It takes some convincing to get her father, an Air Force captain (Ari Cohen), to agree to let his very underage daughter spend time with the most famous sex symbol on Earth, but Elvis could be quite convincing. In the end, his conditions were that Elvis pick up and drop off Priscilla himself, and have her back by 2200 hours.
Priscilla is, naturally, starstruck, as are all the other folks who gather to party in Elvis’ off-base housing. But the Elvis she discovers behind closed doors is wounded, lonely, and missing his recently deceased mother. The romance that blooms between them is positively wholesome, and for a very good reason alluded to in one of the film’s few musical moments. At a party, Elvis plops down at the piano and tears through Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.” Shortly before E was charming ’Cilla in Germany, Jerry Lee’s musical career went into a tailspin because of his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin Myra Gale Brown. So when Elvis’ tour of duty was over, he returned to the states and started publicly dating Nancy Sinatra. When Priscilla was 17, she moved to Memphis, quietly taking up residence in Graceland. (Those who attended Immaculate Conception High School will be quite amused by its depiction in Priscilla.)
According to the only person who knows for sure, Elvis and Priscilla didn’t consummate their relationship until she was 18, and they were married. But that only makes this relationship a little less icky to contemporary eyes. Yes, Priscilla enthusiastically consented at every turn, and the 10-year age difference was culturally acceptable in the South at the time. But as Priscilla languishes in Graceland with only the office staff and cook Alberta (Olivia Barrett) to talk to, it becomes clear that Elvis sees her mostly as a possession. To the Memphis Mafia, she was little more than a PR problem. Coppola slyly outlines the tangle of relationships when Elvis gifts her a poodle, then Dee Presley (Stephanie Moore) chides her for playing with it on the lawn where the fans who gather at the gates of Graceland could see her.
This kind of elliptical storytelling is Coppola’s trademark, and she has rarely done it better than in Priscilla. In her own way, Coppola is as meticulous a director as Wes Anderson. Often, the camera lingers on the impeccable production design, while plot points float by in the little details and callbacks.
On the surface, Coppola’s languid Priscilla couldn’t be more different than Baz Luhrmann’s frenetic Elvis, but the two films share one thing in common: If you can’t tune into the director’s unique wavelength, it’s going to turn you off. From Lost in Translation to Marie Antoinette to Somewhere, Coppola keeps returning to lonely young women who see beauty in the world that others miss. In Priscilla, she has found her perfect subject.
Priscilla
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