Post by Dracula on Nov 5, 2023 12:04:45 GMT -5
Priscilla(11/2/2023)
The film follows the relationship of Pricilla and Elvis starting from their meeting on a West German Air Force base in 1959 when she was fourteen and he was twenty four up to their divorce in the mid-70s. That early courtship is at times kind of tough to watch as you’re basically seeing a naïve young girl get groomed and seduced by a much older man into a wildly unequal relationship that is straight-up abusive at times. Cailee Spaeny is twenty five in real life but feels very much like a child as the relationship begins and while Jacob Elordi is in real life only a year older than her, he certainly seems every bit the adult predator here, in no small part because the 6’ 5” Elordi kind of towers over the 5’ 1” Spaeny. Elordi is pretty good as Elvis, not an all timer performance or anything but his imitation is about as strong as Austin Butler’s was and he works at making Presley feel like this rather strange and unstable drug addict. Coppola’s direction is on point and finds a lot of interesting details about Pricilla’s life during this period and captures this rather strange adolescence in a way that feels very authentic and measured and the film also captures a lot of the period details on what looks like a relatively modest budget. I will say though that the whole enterprise loses steam in its second half once Pricilla has aged up a bit and this becomes less of a unique look at a young girl being groomed by an American icon and becomes a slightly more routine look at why it sucks to be married to a rock star. Still, this is definitely a smart expansion of Coppola’s style as an auteur that should impress her fans and it’s a strong depiction of abuse more generally. It’s worth a look if you’re interested, though it’s not exactly audience pleasing and isn’t going to be for everybody.
***1/2 out of Five
After the one-two punch of The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation it really felt like Sofia Coppola was poised to take over the cinematic world but it didn’t really end up playing out that way. Almost everything she’s made since has had its fans and most of it has gotten a solid B/B+ from the critical consensus, basically nothing has really broken out and been embraced as a major triumph. Part of that is that her primary subject, wealthy white girls in living gilded cages, has not exactly jived with the discourse zeitgeist of late and while she has a distinct visual style it’s not one that calls attention to itself and demands respect from the most casual of observers. For better or worse her latest film Priscilla, about the life of Priscilla Presley, will probably continue that pattern as it’s very much a Sofia Coppola film to its core and it’s probably also not going to hit the zeitgeist as I don’t think America is particularly interested in learning about the darker side of Elvis Presley at the moment. I suspect this project was conceived during the era of #MeToo, when there was a genuine interest in re-evaluating the legacy of questionable icons but in late 2023 I think that moment may have passed and it probably doesn’t help that just last year people went pretty all-in on Baz Luhrmann’ bigger budget and more celebratory take on the life of the man and aren’t terribly interested in having that celebration cut off by a pesky little thing like the truth about how much of a creep the guy was.
The film follows the relationship of Pricilla and Elvis starting from their meeting on a West German Air Force base in 1959 when she was fourteen and he was twenty four up to their divorce in the mid-70s. That early courtship is at times kind of tough to watch as you’re basically seeing a naïve young girl get groomed and seduced by a much older man into a wildly unequal relationship that is straight-up abusive at times. Cailee Spaeny is twenty five in real life but feels very much like a child as the relationship begins and while Jacob Elordi is in real life only a year older than her, he certainly seems every bit the adult predator here, in no small part because the 6’ 5” Elordi kind of towers over the 5’ 1” Spaeny. Elordi is pretty good as Elvis, not an all timer performance or anything but his imitation is about as strong as Austin Butler’s was and he works at making Presley feel like this rather strange and unstable drug addict. Coppola’s direction is on point and finds a lot of interesting details about Pricilla’s life during this period and captures this rather strange adolescence in a way that feels very authentic and measured and the film also captures a lot of the period details on what looks like a relatively modest budget. I will say though that the whole enterprise loses steam in its second half once Pricilla has aged up a bit and this becomes less of a unique look at a young girl being groomed by an American icon and becomes a slightly more routine look at why it sucks to be married to a rock star. Still, this is definitely a smart expansion of Coppola’s style as an auteur that should impress her fans and it’s a strong depiction of abuse more generally. It’s worth a look if you’re interested, though it’s not exactly audience pleasing and isn’t going to be for everybody.
***1/2 out of Five
