by Jason Osiason

All doubts and concerns regarding Sofia Coppola’s new film vanish after The Ramones needle drop in the opening sequence. Sofia Coppola took the tired biopic genre again and said to hell with it! Intermixed with her trademark directorial flourishes, she refuses to tell a sanitized truth. Priscilla is perhaps the darkest and slyest film she has ever made. It acknowledges all the stigma associated with both the biopic genre and the controversy of the subject and plays with those expectations in a surprisingly moody and provocative manner. Elvis and Priscilla are depicted as ordinary people, which ironically highlights the mythmaking in their story.

As a young woman, Priscilla can only obsess with what is presented to her by both society and her father-dictated familial structure—and what is presented to her is this world of curated pop-culture (music from Elvis, gaudy pin-up makeup, etc.). In a staggeringly spellbinding performance, Cailee Spaeny (a star!) unravels the purgatory of desire. Like the color palette of the film, she carries the film with a muted sense of instinct and fragile physicality. A simple glance in her eye hints at a submerged maturity aching to grow. She is always looking up at the characters speaking down to her or from a distance, and the camera is blocked accordingly (quite often with high angles and wide framing).

Spaeny is constantly rewarding and shimmering, which sets the remaining tone of the film until it suddenly dissociates in a fever dream of minimalist digressions heightened by the occasional bombastic rapid montage of collaging time. This approach may leave audiences feeling anticlimactic in the third act, but I was mesmerized by how the script still avoids convention. Jacob Elordi’s apathetic Elvis delivers a layer of tragic-comedy, which Coppola is underrated at. His performance subtly critiques the myth of Elvis, portraying him as a distant figure overshadowed by his own legend.

The film follows Priscilla’s journey from a sheltered girl to the wife of one of the most famous men in the world. It details their first meeting when she was just 14 and he was already a superstar, their marriage, and the eventual strains on their relationship caused by Elvis’s career and lifestyle. Coppola’s exploration of the isolation between men and women finds new depth in Priscilla. The film delves into the intricacies of their relationship, exposing the emotional void and the facade of their public personas. The juxtaposition of Priscilla’s yearning for genuine connection against Elvis’s detachment underscores the film’s haunting commentary on fame and identity.

With its lush cinematography and meticulously crafted scenes, Priscilla captures the essence of a bygone era while providing a fresh perspective on a well-known story. Coppola’s ability to blend the ordinary with the extraordinary, the personal with the public, results in a film that is both intimate and expansive. It’s a beautiful, haunting examination of a woman trapped in the gilded cage of her circumstances, making Priscilla a standout in Coppola’s illustrious career. [A-]