Movie Review: Priscilla

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla marks the second film involving Elvis Presley to be released in the last eighteen months following Baz Luhrman’s Oscar-nominated film, Elvis. We’ve seen films with similar subjects be released at the same time before, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, Capote and Infamous. Usually when films of similar topics are released around the same time, the two films are constantly compared to which one is better.

But that won’t, or shouldn’t, be the case when it comes to Priscilla and Elvis. Luhrman’s Elvis is a bombastic, glossy picture of the legend and superstardom of Elvis. The film barely mentions his wife Priscilla and anything that happened with them together. Priscilla plays as a perfect antithesis to Elvis and a great companion piece. Priscilla shows us the woman behind Elvis, the pressure that came with it, and the ups and downs of their marriage.

Priscilla isn’t a full-life biopic of Priscilla Presley, but a biopic about the relationship she had with Elvis. The film starts at a West German naval base. Priscilla, played by Cailee Spaeny, is fourteen years old, lonely, and bored in the military town. She gets invited to Elvis Presley’s house for a party, who is in West Germany for military duty. Presley (Jacob Elordi), who was 24 at the time, takes a liking to Priscilla and continues to invite her to other parties and then on dates. The two begin to fall hard for each other, eventually leading to Priscilla moving to Graceland with Elvis and his crew following his military duty.

Everything at Graceland starts well and Priscilla could not be happier. But when Elvis starts traveling on tour and for movies and the tabloids show Elvis having affairs with other women, her world isn’t everything she thought it would be and she begins to question her relationship with Elvis and her identity. 

Coppola is working in familiar territory in Priscilla. She has become a master of analyzing lonely people and women in the spotlight and both of those themes are front and center in Priscilla. At the Army base, Priscilla roams through her days with nothing to look forward to. When she meets Elvis, he introduces her to new people and a new world. But when she was in the presence of Elvis, all eyes were on him and the world revolved around him. While he gives her attention now and then, there are moments where Priscilla feels like an armpiece for Elvis, especially when he is picking out her clothes, her makeup, and her hairstyle. Coppola smartly uses vast sets and deep-focus cinematography, along with the significant height difference between Spaeny and Elordi, to highlight how small Priscilla is in Elvis’s world.

Spaeny gives one of the great breakout performances of 2023 as Priscilla. She has the task of playing Priscilla from age fourteen to twenty eight when she left Elvis, and through each stage of Priscilla’s life, you believe Spaeny at every age. She portrays the naivety and starstruck lover of the teenage Priscilla, the awe and amazement she has when she gets to Graceland, the love, confusion, and hatred she has towards Elvis, and the strength and empowerment she gains the longer she is with Elvis. Spaeny gives a transformative, awards-worthy performance and one of the best in any Sofia Coppola movie.

Jacob Elordi stars as Elvis and the best way I can describe the performance is bizarre, transfixing, and excellent. Elordi looks nothing like Elvis and the voice he uses is closer to an impersonator you’d find in Las Vegas than the actual Elvis. But you cannot take your eyes off Elordi. His towering height, ridiculous good looks, and movie-star charisma light up every frame he is in. Elordi is a star in the making and his chemistry with Spaeny is perfect.

Anchored by two star-making performances from Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi and excellent filmmaking from Coppola, Priscilla is a beautifully made film about loneliness in a big world. It is one of Sofia Coppola’s best films and a perfect companion piece to Baz Luhrman’s Elvis.

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