Priscilla (15)

Fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to singer Elvis Presley, 10 years her senior, at a party in 1959 Bad Nauheim in Germany, where her stepfather Captain Beaulieu is stationed in the US military. Despite the concerning age difference, Elvis and Priscilla date and in 1962, after Elvis completes his service, he invites her to stay with him in Graceland under the care of his cherished grandmother Dodger.

LondonNet Film Review

Priscilla (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Glimpsed through 21st-century eyes, the relationship between singer Elvis Presley and teenager Priscilla Beaulieu depicted in writer-director Sofia Coppola’s provocative drama should arouse suspicious minds from the moment the pair first kiss and he pulls away, whispering: “It’s time for you to go home little one.” Adapted from the memoir Elvis And Me by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon, Coppola’s stylish feature dramatises the turbulent inner workings of one of the most high-profile celebrity marriages of the 1960s as a narrative counterpoint to Baz Luhrmann’s boisterous Elvis. In both pictures, the romance of a hip-swivelling rock’n’roll god and wide-eyed ingenue is a rollercoaster ride of tenderness and toxicity…

Priscilla glimpses events through its subjects heavily mascaraed eyes and consequently omits concert performances while the young bride-to-be is trapped in her gilded cage at Graceland. Coppola intensifies our discomfort with the pronounced 41cm height difference between lead stars Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny, which minimises Priscilla in shared scenes so she looks childlike and easily manipulated. “When I call you, I need you to be here for me, baby,” Elvis tells Priscilla at one point and she willingly submits. Are You Lonesome Tonight? could be the soundtrack to their marriage if Coppola was predisposed to literal music cues. Instead, she jives around sharp edges of a topsy-turvy courtship including violent outbursts and attempted sexual assault.

Fourteen-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (Spaeny) is introduced to singer Elvis Presley (Elordi), 10 years her senior, at a party in 1959 Bad Nauheim in Germany, where her stepfather Captain Beaulieu (Ari Cohen) is stationed in the US military. Elvis and Priscilla spend increasing amounts of time together and the starstruck teenager allays the concerns of her mother Ann (Dagmara Domimczyk) about the age difference. “He just lost his mother and he’s still grieving,” pleads Priscilla. “He trusts me.”

The relationship blossoms and Elvis persuades Captain Beaulieu and Ann to let Priscilla stay with him under the care of his cherished grandmother Dodger (Lynne Griffin) while she completes her education at a Catholic high school. Elvis is away for extended periods to make films or tour and Priscilla languishes alone at Graceland, tormented by magazine articles about Elvis’s supposed affairs.

Priscilla is a cautionary tale about the intoxicating allure of celebrity and the complicity of youth in its own corruption. Spaeny is mesmerising from the first moment we glimpse her sitting alone at a diner counter sipping a milkshake, and she expertly shepherds her character along an obstacle-strewn path to empowerment via prescription medication abuse and psychological torment. Elordi’s embodiment of Elvis is less eye-catching than Austin Butler but he teases out the darker side of a musical icon. Coppola’s study of an imbalance of power doesn’t leave us all shook up but we are certainly dishevelled.

– Jo Planter