Download Film Priscilla (2023) BluRay 480p, 720p, & 1080p HD
The film adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s Elvis and Me promises to subtly reveal the horror behind the majesty of Graceland.
When the press on nails bring you no joy: Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla. Image Credit: A24
Minor spoilers for the book Elvis and Me.
When I first read Elvis and Me, written by Priscilla Presley with Sandra Harmon, I was 14. I reveled in its descriptions of early 1960s Graceland, Elvis Presley’s Memphis version of Versailles. I was also thrilled by Priscilla’s physical transformation in her spirited bid to ascend to the title of Queen of Graceland. The idea of this rather plain 14-year-old military brat applying gobs of black winged eyeliner, teasing up her hair to herculean heights, getting a mod new wardrobe, and having her already blackened eyelids weighed down by multiple sets of false eyelashes seemed dreamlike and glamorous — plus, she had one of the sexiest bachelors in the world, at the time, on her arm. How grown up! It was like Disney’s Cinderella set against a rockabilly background.
As a teenager, her story seemed powerful and exciting…but then again, I was a teenager and had no real insight into the many disturbing undercurrents at work in Priscilla’s teenage dream. I doubt my brain was even entirely developed by this point. In my 14-year-old view, she had an older, hot rock star boyfriend and probably felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
Fast forward to 2023, and Sofia Coppola’s vision of Elvis and Me, Priscilla, will be released in theaters this fall. Coppola has stated that Priscilla will almost be a Graceland-centered Marie Antoinette, her 2006 film about another teen queen adrift in an immaculate, spacious estate. Indeed, there are the mildly anachronistic touches in Priscilla that were all over Marie Antoinette; the titular character, played by Cailee Spaeny, looks like a more stylized version of the real-life former Priscilla Beaulieu, and modern bands, including Phoenix, round out the soundtrack. While I haven’t seen a preview of Priscilla — I’ve only seen A24’s teaser trailer — it promises, in Coppola’s subtle, non-showy way, to highlight the sometimes horrifying timeline of Priscilla’s physical transformation from a blah teenager into a rock star’s ideal woman.
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In the teaser, Spaeny’s Priscilla Beaulieu literally goes from child to woman in 46 seconds. The drab wardrobe Beaulieu wore as a military brat in Germany is shed, and we see her applying the eyeliner, false eyelashes, pink lipstick, and Aqua Net that constitutes her new “uniform.” This is because in the book Elvis and Me, Presley discusses how Elvis molded her into what he wanted her to look like, and he liked big hair and lots of pitch-black eyeliner. By the time they married when she was 21, she was the final, perfect version of Elvis’ “ideal woman.” (Ironically, she looked kind of like a female Elvis, with her shellacked black hair and exaggerated, dark features.)
Priscilla teaser trailer. Video Credit: A24
We briefly also see a pregnant Priscilla, now having “won” Elvis and becoming his bride, anxiously checking herself out in a full-length mirror at Graceland. This is because, in real life, according to Elvis and Me, Priscilla was nervous about losing her sex appeal due to her pregnancy, which produced the sole heir to the Presley throne, Lisa Marie (who sadly died in January this year). Priscilla recounted in the book how she tried to keep her weight down as much as possible during her pregnancy so as not to turn off Elvis. She ultimately was successful, but the book goes into some detail about how her pregnant body somewhat repelled Elvis…thus she became repulsed as well and decided to control her appearance as much as she could during what should’ve been a carefree, joyful time between husband and wife.
In the book’s narrative, Priscilla even intimated that she had her eyelashes and eye makeup on before she went to the hospital to give birth to Lisa Marie. Here, we learn how much Priscilla tried to control herself even during her most vulnerable moments. It echoes a poignant reminiscence another legendary 1960s icon, the late Jane Birkin, once shared about her first marriage to composer John Barry. Birkin revealed she kept an eye pencil under her pillow to conceal her small, “piggy” eyes from Barry (that marriage eventually failed, and she soon hooked up with Serge Gainsbourg in France…and the rest, as they say, is history). Even in her sleep, Birkin felt a need to control her appearance to appease a man.
In a sense, Priscilla promises to be the ultimate body horror film, with flashes of how its central character transformed herself for better and worse, although I doubt the real-life Priscilla viewed it that way. Like Marie Antoinette, it explores the “double” metaphor; in that movie, young Marie Antoinette is whisked away from her Austrian home in drab clothes. Upon reaching Versailles, she is clad in a brand new, ruffly French wardrobe, her hair piled high. Her “old,” less fabulous self is almost a different person entirely, exiled to the past. From viewing the teaser, one gets the sense that Priscilla underwent the same process.
It’s unclear if the film delves into how Elvis fed young Priscilla pep pills and downers or if it directly approaches how underage she was during much of their relationship. The movie’s historical timeline is also unclear as of writing this. In last year’s Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann, an account of Elvis’ life that is almost entirely Elvis-centered, their divorce is discussed. It’s depicted as a pivotal event leading to his decline and his 1977 death. In Elvis and Me, Priscilla discussed further physical changes she undertook as their relationship fell apart; she washed off the thick scads of eyeliner, disposed of the helmet hairdos, and became more natural and approachable as she readied herself for a life without the King.
Perhaps Coppola wants the viewer to understand the story via the movie’s imagery versus its dialogue, just as she directed Marie Antoinette. That movie was widely panned for having more “style than substance,” but it did manage to tell Marie Antoinette’s story through a particular filter; it showed the excesses of Versailles and the sometimes innocuous, embarrassing work of being “royalty” through the lens of a teenage girl who merely wanted to enjoy pretty dresses, parties, pet dogs, and candy, free of the demands her job — to make royal children — made upon her.
Priscilla’s images of Spaeny’s Graceland princess-turned-queen — looking impossibly young but frighteningly adult simultaneously — suggest that the movie will capture Elvis and Me’s vibes of being too damn young to feel this old and continue Coppola’s explorations of interrupted girlhood.
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