2024-03-30 06:25:16
There is no need to carry the rock encyclopedia with you to appreciate Sofia Coppola’s portrait of Priscilla Beaulieu, now 78 years old, wife of Elvis Presley from 1967 to 1973 as well as mother of Lisa Marie, who died in 2023 in Los Angeles, and the musician Navarone Garibaldi, the result of the subsequent relationship with Them Guns. This is not the usual biopic of reflection, sideways and sideways of the champion: rise, torment and fall, from the point of view of those who were at her side, for better or for worse. instead the portrait of a woman like many others who tolerates madness, betrayals and sentimental changes of gear. A patient and loving woman. A Penelope without canvas. Coppola stays far away from the comparison with the biography of Elvis signed by Baz Luhrmann in 2022: here there is no music, there are no studio rehearsals and concerts, except in passing.
The legions of adoring fans and collective swoon-worthy tours remain outside Graceland’s door and Elvis The Pelvis’ crises are barely hinted at in the finale. Here there is instead the complex relationship between a man, a tender and capricious star with his nightmares and his oddities, and a devoted woman, torn from her family at 14, surviving the wait for her partner, a long stand-by , willing to forgive his escapades, from Ann-Margret to Nancy Sinatra, prisoner in a gilded cage, lost in a limbo of love and anger, capable of staying close to the champion with the quiff even in the worst moments without getting overwhelmed.
A submissive woman? Yes, you can say that. But she too is a diplomat, careful not to let her nerves get to her, far from that immobile, bouffant doll that the gossip magazines have given us.
Today Priscilla, with some discontent, is also the executive producer of the film presented at the Venice Film Festival last September and received with legitimate doubts despite the original and surprising cut. Elvis and Priscilla met in 1959 at a party in Wiesbaden, Germany, while Presley was serving in the military. He was already a star in Colonel Parker’s hands, she was a delightful little girl excited in front of his idol. When he noticed her, he fell in love with her and wanted her with Memphis, with the interested consent of her father. You know I would never hurt you, Elvis assures the little girl. Sincere in intentions, little in behavior.
Theirs was a mnage with little sex and many pills: to sleep, to keep awake, to stimulate creativity. Priscilla agreed not to enter her husband’s cone of light, happy only to be next to her and to be the port to return to after all the storms, from occasional girlfriends to the crush on transcendental philosophy. The most used phrase in the film: I miss you, darling.
Elvis and Priscilla married in 1967, Lisa Marie was born a year later. The couple separated in 1972. Coppola courageously oriented himself towards a narration that was not very mythological, without excess, intimate, as you wouldn’t expect. And if the game isn’t worth it also because the two interpreters, Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi, who come from the TV series, she is petite and he is 1.96m tall, are not lightning strikers in deepening their characters. Spaeny, surprisingly, also won the Volpi Cup for best actress in Venice, beating none other than the unreachable Emma Stone of Poor Creatures!
PRISCILLA by Sofia Coppola
(Usa, 2023, durata 113’, Vision Distribution)
con Jacob Elordi, Cailee Spaeny, Emily Mitchell, Jorja Cadence, Tim Post, Ari Cohen, Josette Halpert, Deanna Jarvis
Rating: *** out of 5
In the rooms
March 30, 2024 | 07:23
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