The question of who is allowed to tell a story has come into sharp focus in recent years. From Oppenheimer to Euphoria, audiences are facing films and TV head-on with the question “Why are you telling me this?” — and while some people will reject this idea on its face, I think it is an unmitigated good that it has led to a greater focus on stories being told by the people involved or affected.
Priscilla, based on the book Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley, covers the earlier years and collapse of their relationship, beginning when she was 14 and concluding in the 1970s. It’s a simple film in terms of structure, often presenting interactions between the two with a kind of fly-on-the-wall approach, but the effect is a very striking snapshot of this relationship, and how Elvis’ celebrity consumed Priscilla’s youth. Although the film stands entirely on its own, it is hard not to think of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis as the two, naturally, explore the same locations and iconography. Sofia Coppola’s take is not a reactionary one, but it presents the reality of this relationship in a way that leaves you asking why exactly it was absent from the earlier film.
While Priscilla Presley personally maintains that her relationship with Elvis was a positive one, Sofia Coppola’s lens is much less forgiving, taking every effort to remind the audience of their gap in age and maturity to the point of almost making his pursuit feel absurd. Early scenes where a 24-year-old Elvis has to ask for permission to take Priscilla out force an audience to ask what he was getting out of this, and while Priscilla maintains he was well-intentioned, Coppola clearly feels otherwise. The casting of Jacob Elordi, a man 6 inches taller than Elvis whose most iconic role is a famously controlling boyfriend reiterates this gulf in age, Elordi successfully balancing his Elvis performance with the energy of Nate Jacobs to an almost anachronistic level.
Cailee Spaeny performs Priscilla with absolute precision, riding the line between captivated and imprisoned along with the exact rhythms of the film. In the film’s early scenes, despite Coppola’s perspective, her performance completely answers the question of why Priscilla responded to Elvis’ approach: she felt seen. What the film does from this point is ask what he doesn’t see, and what that refusal to acknowledge her totality does to her. One striking moment early in the film when Priscilla arrives at Graceland really highlights this: as she passes through the gates to the stunningly kept, white-painted fortress of Americana, she is directed to the back where Elvis has left her a gift; a small dog, in its own cage of white picket captivity. This sets the tone for much of the rest of the film, where her attempts to express her own individuality are shouted down by Elvis who has no interest in anything but her presence.
Fascinatingly, both Priscilla and Luhrmann’s Elvis before it are stories about grooming, and the ways in which powerful men exhibit control specifically in response to the idea of change. While Colonel Tom Parker exists in this film only as an unheard voice on the other end of the phone, any awareness of his role in Elvis’ life will provide these beats with an additional weight. In doing this, the film positions Priscilla not only as the next in a line of victims, but also adds further weight to her final decision to break that cycle and in the telling of this story, reclaim her identity.
It is here that this film really finds its reason to exist, serving not only as another corporate branding exercise but as an experiment in finding the real story and justifying why that is a valuable process. That this film is about someone whose life and expression were ruthlessly shaped by the whims of someone else makes it very hard to argue that its story is not worth telling. This is another way the film exists in contrast to Baz Luhrmann’s film, that story being very specifically about the ways in which the unconsented telling of someone else’s story can be an extension of the same things they experienced in their life, although ironically filtered through the corporate motivations of the Elvis Presley estate.
All this said, Priscilla is not a mechanical repetition of real-life events. It is a carefully framed, beautifully performed snapshot of a feeling. This is a small film with a narrow focus, but Coppola picks up on hugely important details that in many ways serve to make it feel universal. Elvis could be any cruel man, and Priscilla could be any young woman whose trust was exploited. This story is told not only because it happened to one person, but because it has been lived by so many people.
