Priscilla

Priscilla

When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 110 minutes
  • Genre: Drama, Romance
  • Stars: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dan Abramovici, Jorja Cadence, Tim Post, Luke Humphrey, Ari Cohen, Josette Halpert, Deanna Jarvis, Tim Dowler-Coltman, R Austin Ball, Dagmara Domińczyk, Kamilla Kowal, Conni Miu, Gwynne Phillips, Kelaiah Guiel, Stephanie Moran
  • Director: Sofia Coppola
 Comments
  • sadmansakibayon - 11 June 2024
    A woman needs to find herself before she commits to a relationship
    A companion piece to any Elvis biopic but even more so a companion piece of Coppola's own Marie Antoinette, a story about a girl much too young to be propelled into the limelight and the suffocation loneliness that attends that position, Priscilla is a stylish, expertly acted and profoundly sad movie. Having recently seen Gillian Armstrong's My Brilliant Career, it also feels like a story in dialogue with that, showing why a woman needs to find herself before she commits to a relationship and the self-effacement that can result from committing too soon.

    Based on Priscilla Presley's own autobiography, the film tells the story of her life with Elvis, from being "headhunted" in Germany as a companion to her life in Graceland, a life marked by loneliness, boredom and living in a kind of permanent standby mode for when Elvis deigned to pay her some attention, to the point of being drugged out of existence to days on end, it tells the story of how women were and often still are, seen as little more than accessories to men and their lives and the unfairness of that.

    Elvis doesn't come off smelling like roses here, he comes off as selfish, inconsiderate and as someone who wants to be with Priscilla because she is a "blank slate" a girl still in highschool with no career or life of her own that he can mould to his needs. If we wonder why he was never romantically involved with his co-stars like Ann Margaret or Nancy Sinatra we get the answer here. Elvis would not want to deal with a woman with her own head, her own plans and her own needs. When Priscilla finally gets to the point in her life where she develops an independent personality, she leaves. Good for her. Poignant movie.
  • MovieswDan - 10 May 2024
    Good not great
    I just watched this biopic about Elvis's first wife, and I have to say I learned some things that I did not know about Priscilla Presley. Of course, I was not surprised by this considering I did not really know much about her at all. I guess that is what happens when your husband is Elvis. The movie is written and directed by the wonderfully talented Sofia Coppola and is based off the book "Elvis and Me" written by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon. Cailee Spaeny stars as the titular character and is joined by Jacob Elordi who takes on the role as Elvis.

    This was a very interesting story about the woman behind one of the most influential musical performers of his generation. I found it very interesting to learn more about Priscila herself and everything that she struggled with. The story of Elvis is very popular and well known and I felt that Coppola did a very good job of keeping the focus on Priscilla. Elvis was there, but only as a side character. In the film, we learn that Elvis was not always kind to Priscilla. This aspect to of the film was not positively received by Elvis's estate, especially his late daughter Lisa Marie who threatened to speak out against the film upon it's release. Sadly, Lisa Marie passed away before the film was released. I will admit that I found the story a little dull and boring at times, but I really enjoyed the concept and am glad I watched it.

    All in all, I would consider this movie as good not great and give is a 6.8/10. Priscilla is now streaming on MAX and I recommend giving it a watch.

    Thanks for reading!
  • Pjtaylor-96-138044 - 18 April 2024
    Pristine/ Prisoner/ Priscilla.
    A pristine prison. A gilded cage. A king and his queen. The antithesis of 'Elvis (2022)': quiet, subdued, grotesque in its content rather than its execution. An exercise in restraint. The lonely moments in-between the glamour. The grooming. The controlling. The waiting. A series of moments. Like its focal relationship, it's pretty on the surface but (at least a little) hollow at its core. For a movie supposedly about Priscilla, it doesn't really tell us anything about her. Who is she other than the living doll Elvis decides to bring home one day? Of course, that's the point. 'Priscilla (2023)' highlights the abuse inherent in a relationship built upon this many different power imbalances. It's a sickly movie, one that constantly sends shivers up your spine with its mundane horrors. "Ninth grade? Jesus, you're just a baby" is followed shortly by "shall we go somewhere quiet?"; "She's much more mature than her age" comes just before "I'll find her a good Catholic school"; a dependency on pills, a necessity to stay by the phone, and a requirement to look a certain way all arrive before a high school graduation. A stolen childhood is marked by red flags ignored by a little girl in love with a legend. For this purpose, it makes sense to exclusively show Priscilla trapped by her relationship with everyone's favourite died-on-the-toilet joke. Despite always being in her perspective, we're never really let inside her head. However, surely the point is that the relationship doesn't actually define her as a whole, and if the intention is to show Priscilla's unconventional coming of age, to show her growing into a woman capable of understanding - and changing - her situation, surely the bad must be offset by the good? Surely we must be given an insight into who she can become once she's out from under Elvis' thumb? The film feels like the first half of the story it's trying to tell, which makes its speeding through the latter stages of its central couple's marriage all the more strange. These later sequences would be the perfect opportunity to show Priscilla evolving into the woman she's going to become after the credits have rolled. They're glossed over, though. They're not given the same attention as the grooming and the gaslighting and the generally gross behaviour. While it presents all those things in a low-key yet impactful fashion, it just feels like it's missing something thematically. It's well-performed, well-directed and visually gorgeous, but there's the sense that it's only half of what it needs to be. It's not a bad film, by any means. It's affecting and uncomfortable and mostly engaging from start to finish. It's self-assured and unwilling to dip into caricature. There's something strangely alluring about its beautiful emptiness, too. It feels real, far more real than the other film featuring Elvis I mentioned earlier. It's good, but it's not great. Whether it's vapid is debatable, but whether it's as deep as it could have been isn't.