Susan Granger’s review of “Priscilla” (A24)
What would you call a 24 year old pop singer who pursues a 14 year-old girl, a naïve ninth grader who is dazzled by his fame and fortune?
I’d call him a manipulative predator, even if his name was Elvis Presley, but the gullible parents of Priscilla Beaulieu allowed him to groom her to be his ‘living doll,’ a pampered, privileged captive in Graceland’s gilded cage.
In casting “Priscilla,” filmmaker Sofia Coppola (“Lost in Translation,” “Marie Antoinette”) chose diminutive 5’1” Cailee Spaeny to play the titular role; she’s visibly dwarfed by 6’5” Jacob Elordi as towering Elvis.
Coppola deftly depicts exactly how US Army Pvt. Presley persuaded his superior officer to influence Paul & Ann Beaulieu that they should allow their adolescent daughter to date the lonely King of Rock ‘n’ Roll while he was stationed in West Germany in 1959; Paul Beaulieu was in the US Air Force at the time.
When Elvis returned home, he called Priscilla frequently to reassure her that he was planning to bring her to Memphis to complete her education. Once enrolled in a local Catholic school there, she was such a poor student that she is shown cheating on a final exam in order to graduate from high-school.
Admitting her delusional romantic fantasy in her memoir “Elvis and Me” (1985), Priscilla poignantly notes: “You lived his life. You saw the movies he wanted you to see. You listened to the music he wanted to listen to. You’d go to places that he would go…I honestly didn’t have my own life…so I really kind of lost myself.”
Although Priscilla and Elvis slept in the same bed – where he plied her with ‘uppers’ and sleeping pills – she insists that they did not have sex until they were married on May 1, 1967, when she was 21.
(Lisa-Marie Presley was conceived shortly afterwards; she died earlier this year from a small bowel obstruction caused by adhesions from weight-loss surgery.)
Filmed for $20 million in 30 days in Toronto, the film hints that moody, controlling Elvis may have been sexually dysfunctional with a Madonna complex, although rumors were rampant that he had affairs with Ann-Margret, Nancy Sinatra, Connie Stevens, Rita Moreno and Linda Thompson – among others.
Significantly, the Presley Estate refused Coppola permission to use his music and – unlike Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” (2022) – Presley’s influential mentor/manager, Col. Tom Parker, never appears but Elvis obviously listens to his counsel.
After the Venice Film Festival premiere, now 78 year-old Priscilla Presley acknowledged, “Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework.”
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Priscilla” is a bleak, depressing 5, playing in theaters.
