Priscilla Review: A Beautiful yet Disappointing Memoir
Going into Sofia Coppola’s new film Priscilla, I had relatively high hopes.
Back in 2022, when Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic was released, I wasn’t that bothered about seeing it. I already knew Elvis Presley as a suspect figure who appropriated the work of black musicians and regularly sought out romantic relationships with children, and I didn’t care to see a film that would presumably invoke empathy for him. But a film about Priscilla, depicting her life and relationship with Elvis through her own complex perspective? That sounded way more interesting.
However, I left the theatre feeling underwhelmed and disappointed, and with a lot of thoughts about why, for me, the film really missed the mark; so I thought I’d write them down.
(I have always wanted to try writing somewhat regular reviews — in fact, I set up this account three years ago with the intention of uploading essays about books and movies but never actually got round to it. So I thought this could be my first attempt, and the start of a blog that can hold me accountable to my writing.)
Priscilla, written and directed by Sofia Coppola, is based on the memoir Elvis and Me (1985) by Priscilla Presley and Sandra Harmon, and portrays Priscilla’s account of her relationship with global superstar Elvis Presley. The movie follows their almost 15 years of partnership, from their first meeting in Germany in 1959, when Elvis was 24 and Priscilla was just 14 years old, to their marriage and the birth of their daughter, and then their eventual separation in 1973.
In general, I found Priscilla to be highly stylised, with some interesting shots and a lot of attention to detail, but ultimately pretty shallow.
It is obviously a visually stunning film; even just looking at a few stills can confirm this. I don’t know much about cameras, but I know it was shot all on digital, and as a result the film’s cinematography is uniquely textured. It doesn’t do the usual thing modern films do when depicting a past time, all crunchy and speckled and faux vintage. It’s quite a clean image. It feels less like nostalgia bait and more retrospective, like it is looking back on events with clarity and hindsight. It may be set several decades ago, but it’s a film that only really could’ve been made today.
I also like how the film plays with colour grading. At the beginning, when Priscilla is younger, the colouring is soft and warm; everything is beige, orange, pale green, baby blue, it all looks very rosy and sweet, reflective of Priscilla’s girlish excitement and vulnerability in those early days with Elvis. However, towards the end, when Priscilla is older and becoming increasingly disillusioned with her relationship, the film’s wash becomes colder, and colours become more stark and saturated against the gradually fading backdrop. It’s less gentle on the eye, and it makes Elvis and Priscilla’s life together feel unnatural, jarring and discordant.
Another thing I appreciate is the attention to detail, particularly in the costume, hair and makeup. I like watching the incremental evolution of Priscilla’s appearance as Elvis intensifies his hold on her. Her hair gets bigger and more deliberately styled, her makeup becomes more pronounced, and her outfits become flashier and less juvenile. Then, as she grows away from Elvis, the veneer of glamour dies and the styles that have been forced upon her slowly fade. There is similarly pleasing precision in the set design and props — from the old roller rink and bumper cars to the vintage glass soda bottles and the doctored magazine covers of Jacob Elordi as Elvis. The filmmakers were clearly very dedicated to the aesthetics of the film, and to making it feel right.
But with all that visual stimulation aside, many things were lost in this biopic of Priscilla Presley.
The film’s writing was quite weak in places, particularly in the amount of wasted scenes. There is a lot of repetition in Priscilla, a lot of really similar scenes happening over and over again. That’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with repetition — it can be really effective, if it feels intentional or serves a purpose. And I did like some of it in Priscilla.
For example, I liked the motif of Elvis directing Priscilla to his bedroom. It happens twice: once during their second meeting at a party in Germany, another time when she flies out to visit him in Graceland. Both times, in a room full of adults, Elvis tells Priscilla where his bedroom is and says he’ll meet her there soon. It’s clear that everyone present knows what’s going on, with one woman even pointedly remarking how young Priscilla seems, but the two purposefully aren’t seen going to bed together. Each time it happened, it made me feel deeply uncomfortable. It presents their relationship as this weird secret that everyone knows about but nobody really acknowledges or challenges. It feels really sleazy and underhand and wrong, and the façade of secrecy creates tension. It also speaks to the power dynamic between them, with Priscilla following Elvis’s instruction and waiting for him in his room, meanwhile Elvis can appear whenever he chooses. Everything is on his terms, and under his control. In this instance, the repetition serves a clear purpose — it emphasises just how inappropriate and predatory their relationship was, even for the time, and how many people enabled it.
However, other instances feel less intentional. For example, there are far too many very short scenes of Priscilla in school. I counted at least nine scenes of Priscilla either in class or walking down the school corridor, and every single one is less than a minute long — in fact, some are just single shots, lasting only seconds.
The individual scenes do arguably have some purpose. One shows her falling asleep in class to imply how many late nights she spends with Elvis. Another shows her at school with her hair and makeup perfectly done amongst “fresh-faced school girls” (p.43) to highlight the difference between Priscilla and her peers, and how disproportionately fast she is being forced to grow up under Elvis’s influence.
However, there are just so many of them, and they add very little each time, mainly because they are way too short to make any impact. After a while, they start to feel like useless, transitionary filler. It’s as if the filmmakers knew they had to show her in school but were unwilling to spend any real time on it, or develop her character outside of her relationship.
There are also several scenes with Priscilla on the phone. In general, there are a lot of phone calls in Priscilla. At least 10, I believe. The calls between Priscilla and Elvis while he is touring or shootings films are great, mainly because they contribute to the lore and power of him. For a long time, he isn’t a stable physical presence in Priscilla’s life, but instead just a disembodied voice on the phone — distant, incorporeal, equal parts loving and authoritative. Because he is just a voice, he has no physical or spatial restrictions; he’s as intangible and omniscient as a God. It’s very intimidating.
Some of the phone calls, however, feel less effective. In fact, at one point Priscilla has virtually the same phone conversation two times. One call is from Terry, the man from the diner who first invites her to Elvis’s house. Terry tells her Elvis wants to see her again, she says her parents won’t let her, and he says he’ll speak to them. Another is from Elvis asking her to come visit him in Memphis, she says her parents won’t let her, and he says he’ll sort it.
This is the same conversation happening twice, with no particular intention or desired effect in mind. It’s just a dialogue template, a meaningless transitioning from one phase of events to the next.
Something similar happens right at the beginning of the film:
In the very first scene, Priscilla is sitting in a diner when she is approached by Terry, who claims to be a friend of Elvis’s and asks if she would like to come to Elvis’s party. Priscilla tells him she will have to ask her parents.
In the next scene, Priscilla argues with her parents, telling them Terry and his wife would chaperone her.
In the scene after that, Priscilla and her parents are in the same diner when Terry approaches once more, inviting Priscilla to Elvis’s party again and reassuring her parents that he and his wife would chaperone her. The family tells him they’ll “discuss it” (p.5)
Here, the film is telling us the same information over and over again — and as a result, these scenes are playing out essentially the same conversation three times! Watching this in the cinema, I was baffled. This is the first three scenes, the first five minutes, responsible for introducing us to the movie and engaging us enough to keep watching. And they are squandered in wasted scenes that repeat information and add so little each time. It feels, as much of Priscilla does, like the filmmakers are just going through the motions and doing what they have to do before they can get to the scenes they really care about.
In general, the pacing of Priscilla is odd at times, especially in this first act. Not only are the first three scenes lacklustre, but they also get us off to a strangely sudden start; and in general the film doesn’t really spend much time establishing Priscilla’s character or the early days of her relationship with Elvis.
When we first meet Priscilla, in the diner with Terry, we learn very little about her — we are told that she is from Texas, that her family are stationed at a military base in Germany and she isn’t too thrilled about being there, and that she likes Elvis. It’s a brief conversation that lasts maybe a minute and a half at most. Only a handful of short scenes later and Elvis and Priscilla are already meeting for the first time. Their first conversation is fleeting and bland, and covers a lot of the same things we already know from her conversation with Terry — she’s from Texas, her father is stationed in Germany, etc.
The only notable moment is the following, when Priscilla shows the weakest attempt at sarcasm (from the Priscilla screenplay by Sofia Coppola, p.8):
ELVIS (chuckles): What… What are you, about a Junior or a Senior in High School?
Priscilla blushes.
PRISCILLA: Ninth.
ELVIS: Ninth. Ninth what?
PRISCILLA: Grade.
ELVIS: Ninth grade. Why, why you’re just a baby!
He laughs.
PRISCILLA (curtly): Thanks.
ELVIS (laughing): Well, it seems the little girl has spunk. (p.8)
That’s it. That’s the most interesting part of their conversation. Saying Priscilla shows “spunk” in this conversation is almost comedic, it’s so flat. And this is the only conversation they have that night; we are supposed to accept that this single, relatively dull conversation is enough for Elvis to explicitly single her out and invite her back to his house, and part of the reason he becomes so enamoured by her.
Their second conversation is comparably bland — they talk about music and Priscilla confesses her favourite song is one of his (we already knew she liked Elvis’s music, so once again we still aren’t learning anything new about her) — but it proves enough for Elvis to kiss her and thus commence a relationship with her. After this, he meets her father and they start dating, and things move quickly from here.
Now, I completely understand why Priscilla would become infatuated with him. She’s literally a child when they first meet, and Elvis is older, handsome, charismatic, a global superstar and her favourite singer, and here he is talking to her and making her feel special. Of course she would fall for him so completely, so instantly — who wouldn’t? I also understand that part of the reason Elvis is drawn to Priscilla is because she is so young and vulnerable, and a fan of his, therefore easy to manipulate. She wouldn’t necessarily have to be the most interesting person in the room to attract his attention.
But Elvis was already famous by the time he met Priscilla, and constantly surrounded by young, vulnerable girls just like her who would do anything to please him. And it’s not like he drops her the minute he leaves for work — he continues their relationship long-distance, and even flies her out to Graceland to live in his house. There’s clearly something that makes her stand out. So what is it? As Priscilla’s own father asks: “Why my daughter?” (p.15)
The film never really shows us what makes Priscilla special, and the beginning of their relationship is so strangely underdeveloped. It feels there should’ve been something more, a more palpable spark between them, maybe, or more interesting conversation, or even just more time spent on their initial interactions, to justify their connection and subsequent 15 years of partnership. Without it, the first act just feels rushed.
And Priscilla isn’t the kind of fast-paced, frenetic film that can get away with such a sudden start. Priscilla is extremely sedated. It is low-concept, heavy on dialogue, and driven by nuances in its characters and relationships rather than by external action. It covers more than a decade of events, so it is chronologically long and winding. And there’s lots of lingering shots of Priscilla wandering aimlessly around Graceland, or doing her makeup, or lounging in bed with Elvis. It’s slow, quiet, understated, subdued.
It therefore makes little sense to rush the first act; it is misaligned with the film’s very identity. According to an Oscars interview with the film’s cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, Sofia Coppola had to cut around 10 pages of the screenplay for budgetary reasons, which is a possible explanation for the film’s strange pacing. However, it seems a mistake to devote such little time to the unfurling of things — we don’t see enough of the early stages of their relationship and their burgeoning connection, or of Priscilla’s life before Elvis.
And this brings me onto my other main criticism: for a film that tries hard to convince you it is about Priscilla, it really doesn’t seem to care much about her characterisation.
What do we know about Priscilla before she meets Elvis? We know she is unhappy in Germany. She doesn’t seem to have any friends, as she is so often seen alone. Her relationship with her family is lightly strained by her teenage restlessness and her father’s disruptive military station. And of course, we know she is a fan of Elvis. And that’s about it. We don’t really get anything else. We don’t know what her life was like in Texas, or what she misses about it. We don’t see much of her relationship with her parents, who pretty much disappear after the first act. We don’t know if she has hobbies, any subjects she enjoys in school, anything she’s good at. What’s worse, we don’t see anything interesting about her. We get the sense that she’s shy, but she doesn’t have any real quirks or flaws or unique traits that would make her a real person. The story is taken over by her relationship with Elvis, meanwhile Priscilla herself is essentially characterless.
(Note: And this cannot be because she is young. Young girls have personality. When I was, 14 I was literally insufferable. I was annoying, loud, smart, dramatic, angry. I had hobbies and passions. As did every other 14 year old girl I knew. Young does not equal empty.)
Here’s the thing — the problem isn’t that the story is dominated by Elvis and by their romantic relationship. Priscilla is a child when she meets Elvis, and she is essentially groomed by him from the age of 14. He is the most influential figure in her life, and her first love. Of course he is going to be the centre of her orbit. Victims of abuse don’t get to choose their abuser’s power over them, and it would have been pretty much impossible for Priscilla to break away from him and form a life and personhood separate from him.
The problem is how blank she is before she even meets him. If we had known more about her before Elvis, been given more of an insight into her unique personhood, it would have made her gradual loss of identity all the more affecting. Because she is so blank, she therefore only really exists in this film as the fantasy Elvis had for her — a blank canvas onto which he can project his desires and preferences, and nothing more.
Even at the end, when she is older and has started to drift from Elvis, we still don’t learn much about her personhood outside of conventional gender roles. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sofia Coppola expresses her admiration for Priscilla Presley and her decision to escape her abuser: “She ultimately left and found her identity outside of men, which I thought must have taken so much strength at that time.” But has the film truly shown us who she is “outside of men” by the end? We know she eventually finds the courage to leave him, an laudable act in its own right, but this still intersects with her relationship. We know she is a loving mother to her daughter. We know she takes martial art classes, which seems interesting but even then the film hints at a potential romantic relationship with her teacher. We know she has some friends from a brief dinner scene, but we barely see her interacting with them. Outside of her role as mother and wife, we still don’t know who she is. Even by the film’s conclusion, she lacks distinct characterisation.
I think it’s interesting that Priscilla was written and directed by a woman, particularly a filmmaker like Sofia Coppola (revered for her feminist cinematic principles), as something about it just feels so intrinsically male. The whole time, Priscilla is just this petite, beautiful, passive, submissive young girl, and she never really breaks out of this image. We never see her messy, or bodily, or real.
When we find out she is having her baby, I remember hoping that this would change, that we would finally see something more raw from her. Especially when we see her putting on fake eyelashes to go to the hospital. I thought for sure the film was going to contrast this with a brutal scene of her in labour — messed up, sweating, swearing, shouting, something representative of the reality of childbirth — not in a voyeuristic way, but rather to make her feel like a real human being. But we don’t see her in labour at all. We cut straight from her applying fake eyelashes to her on a hospital bed, cuddling up with Elvis and their newborn. The baby might as well have just arrived by stork, or popped out in an easy, tasteful, bloodless delivery, the kind befitting the gentle, sterile woman of patriarchal fantasy. And immediately after the birth, as she emerges from the hospital with babe in arms, her bump has already vanished. Considering the uterus literally stretches during pregnancy and takes at least several weeks to shrink back down, that’s almost a physiological impossibility. Priscilla, then, is almost anatomically ethereal.
I was bitterly disappointed at how Priscilla’s pregnancy was treated. It could have been an opportunity to temporarily free her from the ideals imposed upon her, and allow her to be a real person, with a real body, and real duality.
Some might argue that this was intentional — that she was restricted in her relationship with Elvis, expected to be perfect at all times, and that this was a conscious effort on the part of the filmmakers to reflect this fact. However, if you are never subverting the fantasy, at what point are you just feeding it? Priscilla isn’t just being boxed in by Elvis; she is suppressed by the film itself. Additionally, in the Rolling Stone interview, Coppola states that her focus was on “(Priscilla’s) perspective and her point of view”: “I feel it’s only my job to show what her experience is like”. But how is this possible when time and time again, the film keeps her locked in Elvis’s fantasy, therefore preventing us from ever accessing her true experience or perspective? She is never once allowed to be real: not by Elvis, and not by the art that is supposed to be about her, and for her.
In short, there is much to admire about Priscilla, but no amount of cinematographic excellence or aesthetic rigor can make up for the film’s distinct lack of depth. Its eponymous character is too empty to connect with, and never truly allowed to break free from the bounds of Elvis’s imagination. And whilst it does present a less flattering portrait of Elvis Presley than we’re used to, it still can’t bring itself to acknowledge the full extent of his emotional, physical and sexual violence against her. With its weak writing, strange pacing, underdeveloped characterisation, and unrelenting patriarchal throughlines, the film’s flaws ultimately prove too distracting to ignore.
