'Priscilla’ Review: Sofia Coppola’s Latest is Comically Bad
Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla has noble intentions but is a largely unimpressive character study bolstered by two comically bad and stilted lead performances from Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny.
It wouldn’t be apt to compare Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. For once, both are vastly different movies in their aesthetic and respective presentations of the King of Rock n’ Roll and his relationship with Priscilla Presley (née Beaulieu). Luhrmann paints Austin Butler’s Elvis Presley as one of the biggest icons the world has ever laid its eyes on and a victim of total control and manipulation by the greedy Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), yet barely glosses over his marriage with Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), as if it’s an unimportant part of his life.
Coppola doesn’t show any scene featuring the King performing in extravagant productions, minus one very brief occurrence where Jacob Elordi’s Elvis swirls deeper down the rabbit hole of drug abuse during his Las Vegas residency. Her adaptation of Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon’s Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock ‘N Roll isn’t about that, and the ones complaining about this are missing the picture's point. This is entirely Priscilla’s story, told through her eyes and ears, chronicling the years of torment she spent with Elvis before ultimately divorcing him in 1973.
The book is a profoundly harrowing tale of abuse but one of the most courageous pieces of autobiographical literature ever written. Priscilla’s life hasn’t been easy, and still isn’t, with the recent passing of her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, in January of this year. Her resilience in overcoming massive adversity should be commended, and she more than deserves the film treatment after Luhrmann didn’t do her side of the story justice in Elvis.
In that regard, Coppola succeeds at giving Priscilla the agency she deserves to tell her story. She slowly builds a creeping uneasiness as Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship grows more uncomfortable. Earlier scenes depict a growing love of Elvis through Priscilla's (played in the film by Cailee Spaeny) eyes, distracted at school and willing to throw her entire life away in Germany to spend time with the King. But it doesn’t take long before Elvis emotionally manipulates her, though in very subtle ways. Priscilla is madly in love with him, while Elvis doesn’t want to make their relationship official – or make love – before they get married.
Meanwhile, he doesn’t hide the letters he receives from other female admirers or perhaps women he is currently engaged in romantic affairs with. Elvis doesn’t entirely tell the truth to Priscilla. She doesn’t much realize it (or seemingly cares) at first but grows to understand exactly what kind of an individual he is – and has always been. All of these story elements are easily perceptible through the way Coppola and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd tell the story from a purely visual point of view. It’s by and large Priscilla’s greatest achievement, but it doesn’t take long for the movie to turn comically sour and repetitively silly beyond visual representations of how Elvis treats Priscilla and its impact on her.
Spaeny has been one to watch since her breakout performance in 2018’s Bad Times at the El Royale. Even in mediocre movies like Pacific Rim: Uprising, The Craft: Legacy, and How it Ends, she always came on top of these productions and remained poised to become a massive star. The consensus certainly seems to agree on how great she is in Priscilla, and she is already on track to be a massive contender for this year’s awards season, winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival and receiving a nomination for Outstanding Lead Performance at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Unfortunately, Spaeny’s portrayal of Priscilla is a mostly stilted affair, never knowing when to exude strong emotion and when to show restraint. Most of the film comprises Priscilla walking around Graceland, waiting for Elvis to return from his film shoots. Of course, that’s by design. By doing this, Coppola shows exactly how Elvis treated and perceived Priscilla, not as a human being he loves deeply, but as an object of amusement and “emotional support,” but those complex scenes require massive amounts of micro-physiognomy (a “silent facial expression”) to represent a psychological shift. Coppola rarely seems willing to give Priscilla some form of personality, regardless of which parts of her relationship she wants to present on screen.
Even the stronger sequences where Priscilla reads tabloid articles of Elvis’ multiple alleged relationships with his screen partners, which clearly takes a toll on her (one of them being that he and Ann-Margret got engaged on the set of Viva Las Vegas), fall completely flat. Spaeny’s acting seems far too distant from what the scene's emotions require, making some of these moments unintentionally hilarious. The aforementioned Ann-Margret moment could’ve been a pivotal point in their already dwindling relationship, but the chemistry between Spaeny and Elordi is so lethargic and lacking any sense of tension that it honestly feels like you’re watching a bad Saturday Night Live parody of Priscilla’s book instead of a tense – and harrowing – account of her life with Elvis.
Elordi doesn’t also fare any better in a largely unsalvageable performance. There isn’t a single genuine emotional note that comes from his portrayal of the King, whether from his public or private facet. Scenes where Elvis physically torments Priscilla aren’t as unflinching as they should be because Elordi’s lackadaisical timing and soporific line delivery bludgeon any attempt at an emotional and harrowing movie. It also doesn’t help that the costume and hair design render both actors as the stars of an Elvis fan film, with Le Sourd’s digital cinematography turning the entire production artificial and Lifetime-lite.
There isn’t a single technical aspect of Priscilla that feels unique in Coppola’s singular directorial vision. Everything looks chintzy and phony instead of distressing and emotionally textured. It’s a rather perfunctory movie that seemingly wants to explore an essential part of history that has been largely overshadowed by Elvis’ legendary status in the media and pop culture’s collective imagination but lacks any emotional tension or depth to make it feel necessary and urgent in its cinematic treatment.
As a result, Priscilla doesn’t amount to a compelling piece of work. I wasn’t big on The Beguiled and On the Rocks, but they were far better than whatever Coppola brought to the screen here. It’s almost as if she doesn’t care anymore, haphazardly representing a harrowing tale of physical and psychological abuse with stiff and unintentionally hilarious acting from its two leads and few redeeming qualities in its presentation. I guess she’ll never surpass Marie Antoinette anytime soon.