VENICE, Italy — You may not think there’s a
need for two big Elvis Presley movies in back-to-back years, but it’s hard to
imagine a pair of filmmakers with sensibilities as different as Baz Luhrmann,
who directed “Elvis” (2022), and Sofia Coppola, who came to the Venice Film
Festival on Monday to debut “Priscilla,” about the rocky marriage between
Priscilla Presley and her famous beau.
اضافة اعلان
Luhrmann is a maximalist, a master of
shock-and-awe spectacle in which every new frame is a confetti-crammed party.
Coppola is more interested in the intimate: her settings may be as luxurious as
Luhrmann’s, but the young women she finds living in these gilded cages are a
party of one, desperate for real connection.
That’s a feeling Coppola has explored in
movies such as “Lost in Translation” (2003) and “Marie Antoinette” (2006), and
“Priscilla” finds the filmmaker at the peak of her preoccupations. “I don’t
know why I keep coming back to it,” Coppola joked at a news conference Monday
after she was asked about her frequent depictions of girlhood. “Hopefully, I’ll
grow up soon.”
Adapted from the memoir “Elvis and Me,” Coppola’s
film gets underway when Elvis, sent to Germany during his military service,
meets Priscilla, the daughter of a military officer newly stationed there.
She’s isolated and homesick, yearning for the life she left behind in the
United States. Despite being a superstar, a besotted Elvis finds he can relate.
Priscilla is also 14, a fact the film
doesn’t shy away from. “Ninth grade? You’re just a baby,” the 24-year-old Elvis
murmurs when they meet at a party, though that age difference hardly slows his
pursuit: at times, he even seems to regard Priscilla’s virginity as her primary
trait. “Promise me you’ll stay the way you are,” he says as he proceeds to turn
the poor girl’s life upside down, eventually whisking her from Germany to
Graceland, plying her with uppers and sleeping pills, and insisting that she keep
their yearslong relationship secret even as he’s publicly photographed in
romantic clinches with the likes of Nancy Sinatra and Ann-Margret.
As in “Marie Antoinette,” when our young
protagonist is dropped in the lap of luxury and finds it awfully lonely,
Priscilla has everything she thought she could ever want and still feels a
lack. The star she found so alluring is often cruel and manipulative, telling
her what to wear and how to act, and reminding her every time she balks that
millions of women would eagerly take her place. To assert herself, Priscilla
has to get creative: since Elvis wants her to dress only in solid colors, every
time he does something upsetting, she retaliates by wearing a vivid print.
Priscilla is sensitively played in the film
by Cailee Spaeny, an up-and-coming actress, while “Euphoria” star Jacob Elordi
has the even trickier task of playing Elvis a year after Austin Butler’s
uncanny re-creation made him an A-lister. Elordi acquits himself just fine, and
it helps that Coppola isn’t interested in staging splashy musical numbers:
during the few glimpses we do get of Elordi’s Elvis midsong, he’s always filmed
from the back. That aesthetic choice smartly steers “Priscilla” away from Luhrmann’s
movie (which was much more interested in Elvis the performer) and further
grounds the film in Priscilla’s perspective. If he’s heading onstage, all it
really means is that he’s leaving her behind.
The movie may also lack big musical scenes
because Presley’s estate was unwilling to support the film or authorize the use
of his songbook. I’m not surprised. Luhrmann’s hagiography was estate-approved
and portrayed the singer as the innocent pawn of his craven manager, Col. Tom
Parker. “Priscilla” shows how manipulative Elvis himself could be. This is no
puff piece: it’s a warts-and-all portrayal of a charismatic man who pulled a
young girl into his orbit and then wouldn’t let her out.
Although Presley attended the Venice news
conference in support of the film, she didn’t sit on the dais with Coppola and
her cast, instead watching from the front row of the audience. But when a
journalist asked what moved her most about “Priscilla,” Presley herself took
the mic.
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a
film about you and about your life and about your love,” she said. “Sofia did
an amazing job. She did her homework.”
The moment that moved her most was the
ending, Presley said. It’s the moment just after their marriage crumbles, when
Priscilla finally summons the strength to stand on her own two feet.
“Yes, I left, and it wasn’t because I
didn’t love him,” Presley said. “He was the love of my life. It was the
lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to
that.”
Read more Entertainment
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
