Sofia Coppola has dedicated her career to capturing the precarious journey of girlhood. From her directorial debut The Virgin Suicides to Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, The Bling Ring, and The Beguiled, Coppola has consistently demonstrated a profound grasp of the female experience. Her latest film, based on the true story of young Priscilla Beaulieu and her world-changing relationship with Elvis Presley, continues this exploration. While Priscilla echoes themes from Coppola’s previous works, her empathetic perspective shines more clearly than ever

An essential part of Coppola’s directing style is her focus on aesthetics. Blushed pink pastels, silk slip dresses, floral wallpaper, the softness of dimpled skin. Early in her career, this commitment to creating a pretty picture sometimes led to her detriment and lumped her into the style over substance category. Her ornate compositions and pristinely feminine visuals overpowered character development or a strong narrative. However, in Priscilla, Coppola’s talent for creating aesthetically pleasing worlds finally pays off, harmonizing her distinctive visuals with a compelling story.

It’s the spring of 1960, a 14-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) hangs by the telephone waiting for a call from her winter fling, Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi). She thinks he’s forgotten about her, but she spends every waking moment thinking of him. Coppola is able to portray Priscilla’s extraordinary circumstances as a universal experience. No matter if it’s the King of Rock & Roll or the boy next door— for a teenage girl, having a crush means insurmountable yearning. After three years of loneliness interrupted by brief visits, Elvis convinces the Beaulieus to let Priscilla move into Graceland, promising she will still graduate high school. This is where her life is really supposed to start, an opulent one filled with joy and love in abundance. Priscilla could’ve never anticipated that the compound in Memphis would become her gilded cage, and her new life would be the loneliest one she’s ever known. 

Just one year after the release of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, Priscilla Presley herself (who executive produced Priscilla and wrote the biography the script is based on) exposed the flip side of the so-called King. Coppola’s movie has no flash, no musical numbers, and barely gives any glimpse of Elvis the icon. Elordi embodies the role with remarkable subtlety and nuance. His performance is so lived-in and fine-tuned that it almost makes any past portrayals seem like a cheap Las Vegas impersonation. Elordi is not afraid to show that Elvis at home— Elvis the boyfriend, then Elvis the husband— is no one to be adored. His presence dominates every environment he’s in, a formidable man with endless power who is surrounded by endless praise, The imbalanced dynamic between Elvis and Priscilla is emphasized by the actors’ massive height difference, with Elordi at 6’5” and Spaeny standing at 5’1”. Spaeny is a silent force to be reckoned with. Her performance exudes warmth, innocence, and she takes her time with every line, every reaction, every bat of her lashes. 

Coppola and Spaeny form a powerful duo, delicately and truthfully portraying the real experience of being groomed into an emotionally volatile relationship. They carefully balance the dialectic of glamourizing all the right things and exposing all the wrong things. A teenage girl would naturally be seduced by the wonders of life with Elvis— fame, clothes, jewels, and more. Being loved by someone who is adored by everyone seems like the ultimate gift, but with Elvis, it comes at a cost. Priscilla’s naïveté is not her fault, nor is it the fault of any young person. At that time, there was no vocabulary or conversation to describe the subtle, prolonged acts of abuse. Manipulation masked as care, isolation as protection, control as preference—all these lead to a complete loss of identity.

Even marriage, the ultimate celebration of love that Priscilla longed for, did little to change how Elvis treated her. Their relationship wasn’t completely loveless— Elvis adored his wife, just not in the same way she adored him. She held onto the tiny moments of intimacy and yearned for more, the same way she used to yearn for his calls. Elvis’ love was conditional, it relied on Priscilla not having a life of her own. Her identity had to orbit around his. She stayed inside the four walls of Graceland for weeks on end, occupying space in the countless sitting rooms, waiting for the blue suede shoes to walk through the door again. Her exuberant surroundings in contrast to the mundanity of her life is devastating. When Priscilla gives birth to their daughter, Lisa-Marie, her world shifts. Caring for a child gives her a sense of responsibility, identity, and, most importantly, a purpose beyond caring for Elvis. In motherhood, Priscilla finally experiences the freeing feeling of true love.

At its heart, Priscilla is the story of a young woman finding herself. Coppola, who has chronicled her own journey of self-discovery through her previous films, has spent her career refining her unique perspective on girlhood. This makes her the perfect person to tell this story with compassion and truth. There is no better director and subject to convey what it’s like to be surrounded by beautiful things but still feel empty. Unlike a lot of Coppola’s past work, Priscilla concludes with tenderness and pure excitement for what the future holds. It ends with the visceral feeling of a lust for life. Backed by Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You,’ Priscilla drives out of the pearly gates of Graceland with Lisa-Marie in the backseat, leaving her interrupted youth behind her. All of the longing, all of the fighting, and all of the hard lessons learned, led up to the most beautiful and satisfying liberation. 

^{*originally published on flipscreened.com on 11/02/2023}