Well, it could have been good. Priscilla is the latest biopic to pick over the crazy, overblown and ultimately pitiful story of
Elvis Presley, the world’s first rock ‘n’ roll superstar.
By Miles Salter
‘Before Elvis, there was nothing,’ said John Lennon, famously, and the rags to riches tale of the kid from Tupelo, Mississippi continues to fascinate audiences around the world. It’s a story that has the sheen of glamour and the sour taste of tragedy. By the time he was 42, Elvis had gone from beautiful, energetic youth to a bloated mess, destroyed by the uppers and downers he had started to take during his spell in the U.S. army, as the new film makes clear.
Priscilla is based on the memoir of Priscilla Presley. Her book, Elvis and Me, was published in 1985, and Sofia Coppola uses the book as her source material. As such, the story is told from Priscilla’s viewpoint. She meets Elvis due to a coincidence. Priscilla was the daughter of Joseph Paul Beaulieu, who adopted the little girl after her genetic father (and a US Air Force pilot) died in a plane crash. Beaulieu was an officer on the German base where Elvis was stationed. When the two met, she was only 14 years old. He became fascinated by the very pretty young girl, and their relationship eventually blossomed.
Elvis does not emerge well out of this film. According to the film, he treated Priscilla like an object, deciding which clothes she could wear, and forbidding her from having a job. While she stayed at Graceland, he was away in Hollywood, making a series of lucrative but insipid films (and conducting numerous affairs), with his buddies (the ‘Memphis Mafia’) hanging around. Elvis feeds his wife sleeping pills. He gets obsessed with new age thinking. He doesn’t seem too fussed about sex. When she says she doesn’t like a potential song choice, he lobs a chair at a wall. To be frank, he comes across in the film as an insecure loser. Eventually, tired of their separate lives, Priscilla leaves Elvis, taking their daughter, Lisa Marie, with her.
The film is all right, as far as it goes, but somehow it manages to take all the colour out of an amazing story and present it as monochrome and dull. The interiors reflect this drabness. The final shot shows Priscilla (played by Cailee Spaeny) driving away. The credits roll. There’s no triumph, poetry or colour. It’s lifeless. The lack of Elvis’s music (his estate said Coppola could not use any of the music) does not help matters. And while Jacob Elordi is good as the self-obsessed Elvis, he is very tall, towering over his co-star like Chewbacca next to R2D2. The previous movie about the King, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, is a much more lavish, and exciting movie.
As for the real Priscilla, there was more to her than meets the eye. She saved the Elvis empire from financial ruin in 1979, and turned it into a tremendous success through smart business decisions. But her life has been full of tragedy. She lost her biological father, her addicted husband, and, in 2023, her daughter, Lisa Marie. She has endured so much. The film depicts her as a determined survivor, which is accurate. It’s just a shame it’s not a more lively piece of cinema.
Miles Salter is a writer and musician based in York. He is co-presenter of the York Calling podcast and fronts the York-based band Miles and The Chain Gang. You can follow him at @mileswrites
