It’s a story that becomes harder and harder to tell in the present epoch. That of Priscilla’s overt grooming by Elvis in order to eventually make her his virgin bride. Of course, that’s not really the story Sofia Coppola wants to focus on with her eighth film, Priscilla. Just as the 1988 TV movie (or “miniseries,” to make it sound more elegant) called Elvis and Me, so, too is Priscilla based on that autobiography of the same name. And yes, the title of it should be telling of the fact that Priscilla continued to view herself as being forever stuck inside the towering shadow of Elvis. Why not Me and Elvis, after all? That her autobiography should have to include Elvis’ name in it was also indicative of the already publicly-held belief that she really was “no one” without him. Had no identity of her own. And a large part of that, as we see in Priscilla (which remains largely faithful to Presley’s book), stemmed from Elvis “getting her” while she was young. Worming his way into her mindspace and heart before she ever had a chance to fully form.
This reality is one that many still don’t want to acknowledge or look at too closely. Including none other than Elvis’ only daughter, Lisa Marie. Indeed, a leaked email that Lisa Marie wrote to Coppola shortly before her death stated, “My father only comes across as a predator and manipulative [in your movie]. As his daughter, I don’t read this and see any of my father in this character. I don’t read this and see my mother’s perspective of my father. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and contemptuous perspective and I don’t understand why?” This form of denial about the type of man her father was is perhaps to be expected. Even questioning her mother’s “awareness” of what she hath wrought in letting Coppola go through with filming this script. So it was that she added, “I am worried that my mother isn’t seeing the nuance here or realizing the way in which Elvis will be perceived when this movie comes out. I feel protective over my mother who has spent her whole life elevating my father’s legacy. I am worried she doesn’t understand the intentions behind this film or the outcome it will have.”
But isn’t it long overdue to look at Elvis’ “dark side” (read: creep factor) with a less flattering microscope than has been done in the past? Hell, even the celebrated Baz Luhrmann biopic, Elvis, chooses to sidestep detailing much of his domestic life with Priscilla, instead focusing on his artistry and the exploitation he suffered at the hands of the Colonel. Some might even say that being exploited so blatantly was what made Elvis want to do it to someone else. That someone else being, most of the time, Priscilla. Subject to his whims and mood swings, Coppola’s adaptation of Elvis and Me shows “Satnin” slowly adjusting to the life she thought she wanted, because that’s what it would take to be with Elvis. The man she pined for from the moment they separated in March of 1960, after Elvis completed his tour of duty in the Army and went back to the U.S.
Being an impressionable young teenager prone to easy attachment and tending to amplify everything more than it actually should be, Priscilla continued to yearn for Elvis as almost two years went by. Years during which she was tortured by published accounts of Elvis’ sexual exploits with his costars. In 1960, that co-star was Julie Prowse, the fiancée of Frank Sinatra (ergo, Elvis “stuck it” to a fellow musical titan while “sticking it in” Prowse). Forced to watch Elvis’ career and personal life unfold from the sidelines, Priscilla almost gives up hope entirely that their year spent getting to know one another on the Army base meant anything at all. And then, out of the blue, just like that, Elvis calls her and invites her to Graceland. This after Coppola shows us the bittersweet passage of time through the girlhood ephemera of Priscilla’s room. For example, a string of pearls hung over a birthday card that reads, “To My Granddaughter Happy Sweet 16”—the words positioned around a blooming rose with two hummingbirds hovering over it. Symbolism indeed. But men don’t tend to have much interest in girls once they “bloom past a certain age.” Maybe, in that sense, it was best for Priscilla to leave Elvis before she turned thirty.
Priscilla’s “Sofian” foil, Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, never had such a choice. Even though she, too, was leading a life largely separate from Louis XVI. A life she made the most of by “being frivolous.” Decorating the palace, overseeing the construction of the Hamlet at Trianon and, needless to say, buying plenty of clothes and shoes. That latter “hobby” being something Priscilla was well-trained in by Elvis himself as he remade her in his image. Not like a god (though Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” is based on Priscilla’s worshipful dynamic with Elvis), but more like a man playing with a Barbie doll. One he could dress up and style however he wanted. And he did, telling her what and what not to wear (patterns were an absolute no-no). Despite having gotten what she wanted when her parents concede to letting her live with Elvis full-time while she finishes high school (a Catholic one chosen by Elvis), Priscilla finds that the “real relationship” she was hoping to achieve by moving in is largely impossible to get in that Elvis is perennially absent (often mentally, as well as physically), blowing in whenever he wants with the same whimsy as a breeze. Worse still, he continues to avert any sexual consummation with her (one supposes at least he had some limits, but that was more about his own fucked-up psychology than anything resembling a moral code).
Priscilla’s privileged girlhood connection to Marie is a motif Coppola established from the outset of her career, with The Virgin Suicides. Its star, Kirsten Dunst, would go from Lux Lisbon to Marie Antoinette in a pinch. And, although mostly panned at the time, 2006’s Marie Antoinette has evolved into being something of a Coppola favorite—one of the most shining gems in her still scant canon. And, of course, it speaks to all the themes Coppola is so fond of: a teen girl’s loneliness and isolation despite living in a gilded world of privilege. One that’s ultimately a prison where she can be abused under the guise of being “taken care of.” Both Marie and Priscilla experienced this in different centuries and places, but the feeling Coppola evokes about what each woman goes through remains entirely similar. In point of fact, Coppola herself remarked of her attraction to the project, “I was just so interested in Priscilla’s story and her perspective on what it all felt like to grow up as a teenager in Graceland. She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in such an amplified world—kinda similar to Marie Antoinette.”
What’s also “similar” is the idea that both women were basically sold off to a suitor. With Antoinette, that reality was obviously more glaring and straightforward. With Priscilla, it was done with more “subtlety.” In this regard, Coppola is certain to include Priscilla’s (whose last name was then Beaulieu) parents’ initial hesitancy about succumbing to Elvis’ overtures. But, in the end, of course, no one ever says no to power. They didn’t call Elvis “The King” for nothing (a modern-day Louis XVI to Priscilla’s Marie). Which is why he had “little minions” to do his bidding for him…like, say, scouting young “talent” for his bedroom. That’s essentially what Elvis’ “Army buddy,” Currie Grant (not to be confused with Cary), did when he spotted Priscilla at the Wiesbaden, Germany “malt shop,” if you will. Seeing something that he knew Elvis would like, he invited her to a party at the house Elvis was renting. Over the course of that year, things remained decidedly Rated G (though Coppola does leave out a scene from Elvis and Me where Elvis comes up to his room to join Priscilla by lying in bed with her). As they did for Marie’s own sex life with Louis, who has the very French male problem of impotency during the beginning of their marriage.
A girl living in a beautiful location with a beautiful man who 1) does not give her any attention and 2) cannot sexually satisfy her seems to be the name of Coppola’s thematic game. To boot, Coppola “was initially drawn towards the character of Marie Antoinette as an innocent and caring character who found herself in a situation outside of her control, and that rather than creating a historical representation, she wanted to create a more intimate look into the world of the heroine.” The same goes for Priscilla Beaulieu. Who never went back to that surname after taking Elvis’—almost like she couldn’t admit that she wasn’t ever a “whole person” without him. In this sense, Priscilla focuses very little on the “transformational” period of “Cilla’s” life (packed in for a few minutes at the end of the movie), which began in the early 70s when she started taking martial arts lessons with Mike Stone. The instructor she would have an affair with (vaguely alluded to by Coppola) and who Elvis would want to have murdered upon finding out. Because, duh, only a husband can have his affairs, not a wife. One who is mostly responding to the lack of emotional and physical attention from her husband. But even when Priscilla started to talk about the sense of independence karate was giving her, she couldn’t help but relate it back to Elvis by saying, “I think he was really proud of me; very few women were doing karate at that time.”
That wouldn’t exactly track, though, considering Elvis didn’t like “his” woman to display any signs of masculine energy. So it is that Priscilla falls into her role as “trophy wife,” though often with no one to “display herself” to. To convey this type of rudderlessness—this emotional vacancy—Coppola provides so many scenes that echo the decadence-drenched loneliness of Marie Antoinette, like Priscilla sitting in isolation on a massive couch at Graceland holding her only companion, Honey. The dog Elvis gave her right when she moved in (likely in anticipation that it would be the only being in her life she could call loyal and constant). Or sitting alone (and pregnant) in the morning at the kitchen table, furnished with lavish fruits and fresh orange juice, in addition to her breakfast, only to further sink into despair upon encountering yet another gossipy headline about Elvis and Nancy Sinatra “canoodling” on the set of Speedway.
Already well-acquainted with Elvis’ affairs after the highly publicized one involving Ann-Margaret during the production of Viva Las Vegas!, Priscilla “learns her lesson” about bothering to confront him. “I need a woman who understands things like this might happen,” Elvis has the gall to scold her after she brings up his affair with Ann-Margaret. But eventually, she knows that nothing will change. Elvis “is who he is.” And “boys will be boys.”
So it is that Priscilla keeps wandering Graceland like the empty palace that it is, her bereftness enveloping the viewer. As does the emptiness of her life in contrast to the abode she haunts, so chock full of opulent furniture and decor. Seeing her life unfold under Elvis’ specter, most audience members of today would ask why and how she could stay with him for so long before realizing how toxic the relationship was. Granted, the TV movie version of Elvis and Me is way more on blast than Priscilla about that toxicity (side note: Priscilla served as an executive producer on both films). Which makes one wonder why Lisa Marie was so scandalized by Coppola’s rendering. It’s far more generous than past presentations have been, doing its best to uphold the myth that this is a love story and not a story of perverse grooming followed by a master-slave dynamic. Even the rape scene in Elvis and Me is much more direct than the one merely inferred in Priscilla. It happens at the very end, with Coppola making it the catalyst for Priscilla’s final decision to leave him the next morning.
And yet, despite all the abusiveness, all the cruelty, Coppola has the “reverence” to conclude the film with Priscilla driving away from Graceland to the tune of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” which comes across as altogether sick after witnessing what we just did. Nonetheless, it’s another classic case in point of Coppola’s acumen with musical selections, especially as she was forced to get creative after being denied use of Elvis’ music by his Estate. Though it was technically allowed to be used in Elvis and Me (even if “rendered” by another singer named Ronnie McDowell), an equally unflattering portrayal. But maybe that just goes to show how much public tastes have changed to reflect that the Estate wouldn’t want to be part of any project that makes Elvis look like the abusive predator he was (what’s more, even Lana “Daddy Lover” Del Rey didn’t make the time to contribute a song to a biopic about a woman she’s often been aesthetically compared to).
As for Coppola’s casting choices, Cailee Spaeny looks like a mashup of Carey Mulligan in An Education (a film that also deals with a teen girl-older man romance) and Natalie Portman circa Closer (with her vocal inflection also mirroring Portman’s), while Jacob Elordi sounds more like Elvis than he looks like him. But Coppola assessed, “I thought nobody was gonna look quite like Elvis, but Jacob has that same type of magnetism. He’s so charismatic, and girls go crazy around him, so I knew he could pull off playing this type of romantic icon.” Though “romantic” doesn’t feel like quite the right word for Elvis anymore.
To that end, while the story it tells is increasingly difficult to stomach in the modern era (Lisa Marie was right about that), Priscilla is a return to form for Coppola after she veered horrendously off course with 2020’s On the Rocks. Perhaps an indication that she’s better at telling stories about daughters and “Daddies” rather than daughters and daddies.
