Priscilla (2023)
Country: US/IT
Technical: col 113m
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen, Dagmara Dominczyk
Synopsis:
While still at school on a US base in Germany, Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to Elvis Presley, who is on military service but pursues her even after he has returned to the States.
Review:
Coppola, who has clearly spent too much of her life in departure lounges and high class hotels, delivers an oddly sanitized portrait of a uniquely peculiar love affair. Although Presley is a paragon of restraint in scenes of intimacy with his (underage) paramour, the abusive behaviour, when it comes, is more in the manner of neglect than chair throwing; indeed, we are almost uncertain whether the affair has been consummated at all before the marriage. For Priscilla, on whose memoirs the screenplay is based, it is a fairy tale come true, albeit with early warnings of Presley's erratic behaviour, until she is ensconced in Graceland and finds herself in a gilded cage. The King seems to want her merely as a possession, a doll-like miniature to have around the house or on the end of the telephone for when he needs her to cuddle up with, reserving his sexual peccadilloes for the starlets and groupies. As usual with the director, the pace is unvarying, the drama sedate, with no screaming and shouting, just the pointed popping of pills and phone calls from 'The Colonel' to indicate there is something not quite right here. Spaeny is perfect at capturing what must be Coppola's prime interest: the lot of an impressionable girl in maintaining her sense of self in such circumstances; Elordi certainly looks the part, but mumbles his way through the script unintelligibly a lot of the time.
Country: US/IT
Technical: col 113m
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen, Dagmara Dominczyk
Synopsis:
While still at school on a US base in Germany, Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to Elvis Presley, who is on military service but pursues her even after he has returned to the States.
Review:
Coppola, who has clearly spent too much of her life in departure lounges and high class hotels, delivers an oddly sanitized portrait of a uniquely peculiar love affair. Although Presley is a paragon of restraint in scenes of intimacy with his (underage) paramour, the abusive behaviour, when it comes, is more in the manner of neglect than chair throwing; indeed, we are almost uncertain whether the affair has been consummated at all before the marriage. For Priscilla, on whose memoirs the screenplay is based, it is a fairy tale come true, albeit with early warnings of Presley's erratic behaviour, until she is ensconced in Graceland and finds herself in a gilded cage. The King seems to want her merely as a possession, a doll-like miniature to have around the house or on the end of the telephone for when he needs her to cuddle up with, reserving his sexual peccadilloes for the starlets and groupies. As usual with the director, the pace is unvarying, the drama sedate, with no screaming and shouting, just the pointed popping of pills and phone calls from 'The Colonel' to indicate there is something not quite right here. Spaeny is perfect at capturing what must be Coppola's prime interest: the lot of an impressionable girl in maintaining her sense of self in such circumstances; Elordi certainly looks the part, but mumbles his way through the script unintelligibly a lot of the time.
Country: US/IT
Technical: col 113m
Director: Sofia Coppola
Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Ari Cohen, Dagmara Dominczyk
Synopsis:
While still at school on a US base in Germany, Priscilla Beaulieu is introduced to Elvis Presley, who is on military service but pursues her even after he has returned to the States.
Review:
Coppola, who has clearly spent too much of her life in departure lounges and high class hotels, delivers an oddly sanitized portrait of a uniquely peculiar love affair. Although Presley is a paragon of restraint in scenes of intimacy with his (underage) paramour, the abusive behaviour, when it comes, is more in the manner of neglect than chair throwing; indeed, we are almost uncertain whether the affair has been consummated at all before the marriage. For Priscilla, on whose memoirs the screenplay is based, it is a fairy tale come true, albeit with early warnings of Presley's erratic behaviour, until she is ensconced in Graceland and finds herself in a gilded cage. The King seems to want her merely as a possession, a doll-like miniature to have around the house or on the end of the telephone for when he needs her to cuddle up with, reserving his sexual peccadilloes for the starlets and groupies. As usual with the director, the pace is unvarying, the drama sedate, with no screaming and shouting, just the pointed popping of pills and phone calls from 'The Colonel' to indicate there is something not quite right here. Spaeny is perfect at capturing what must be Coppola's prime interest: the lot of an impressionable girl in maintaining her sense of self in such circumstances; Elordi certainly looks the part, but mumbles his way through the script unintelligibly a lot of the time.