This month, the film, Priscilla, came to theaters. The movie follows young Priscilla Presley’s life and her perspective of her relationship with Elvis. The movie is adapted from Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N’ Roll.
The movie stars Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis, who many recognize from his roles in Euphoria and The Kissing Booth movies.
Priscilla was written and directed by Sofia Coppola, who’s films I have always enjoyed—some of my personal favorites being The Virgin Suicides (1999) and The Bling Ring (2013). What Coppola’s films all have in common is how greatly and accurately they capture girlhood, keeping up a gorgeous aesthetic that is easy on the eye while still conveying a deep, intricate message and encapsulating the intended feeling; and Priscilla is just another addition to the collection that withholds that reputation.
One of the best things about this film would have to be the accuracy of the styling: specifically Spaeny’s feminine clothing, big, obnoxious hair, and dramatic eye makeup. Priscilla’s looks in this movie play as symbols of her and Elvis’s relationship; they are not just frivolous little details. From Priscilla’s falsely dyed black hair to her dark eyeliner: everything she would wear would be fit to cater to Elvis’s liking. These things are visual representations of the true power imbalance within their relationship.
This certain adaptation of the story of Elvis differentiates itself from all other retellings of his story by finally shining a spotlight on Priscilla’s narrative and holding up a magnifying glass to Elvis’s dark side. Many people view Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship as such a beautiful thing; an ideal Hollywood love story, while brushing under the rug the fact that Elvis was 24 and Priscilla was 14 when they first met. Elordi’s six -foot-five height in comparison to Spaeny being only five-foot-one visually represents how different they really are in age. Many people choose to gloss over this fact because they love Elvis so much that they refuse to believe that he would do anything wrong, but the film reveals that they really do not know exactly who they are idolizing.
Priscilla was definitely an emotionally moving film. It explored the depths of how deep of an effect Elvis had on Priscilla—how ever since they met, her world had revolved around him and him only.
