2024-01-04 16:09:38
There are feelings that immediately soften your gaze. Not in the sense of mental sensations, but rather tactile experiences: when you climb into a freshly made bed with a warm shower, silk and cashmere on your skin or when you walk barefoot across a fluffy carpet. Sofia Coppola’s new film “Priscilla” begins with the last image: bare feet walking across a white terry cloth carpet. And with that an aesthetic, pastel-colored tenderness spreads across the cinema hall, which will accompany it until the end.
The feet belong to Cailee Spaeny, who plays Priscilla Presley so vulnerable and at the same time dignified that she was rightly named best actress at the Venice Film Festival. It was a difficult casting decision for Coppola, as the actress was supposed to portray the 14-year-old with whom Elvis Presley falls in love and the 28-year-old who breaks up with him. But miraculously, 25-year-old Spaeny works in both roles.
Young love: Elvis and Priscilla in the film by Sofia Coppola
Quelle: Ken Woroner/A24 Distribution, LLC
Sofia Coppola came up with the idea for the project while on vacation, as the director explained at the film’s German premiere in Berlin. She took Priscilla Presley’s biography “Elvis and Me” with her as “light, juicy reading” and found the material for her next film in it: A teenager becomes the girlfriend of the biggest pop star in the world. Her first love, the first kiss, the first sex, she experiences all of this with a phenomenon that hundreds of thousands of fans are excited about. It begins near Wiesbaden, where Elvis has to complete his military service. Germany doesn’t come off particularly well in Coppola’s production. It is the mostly gray counterpart to Elvis’ colorful US residence Graceland. However, both locations were filmed on one set in Canada. For Priscilla, Germany becomes above all a place of waiting and heartbreak.
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Sofia Coppolas „Priscilla“
Her father works for the American Air Force and is also stationed in Wiesbaden. Priscilla, who according to her biography won beauty pageants at school, is approached by a man in a café. He wants to know whether she is an Elvis fan. “Of course,” she answers, like all teenagers in the world right now. Priscilla is invited to a party by Elvis and, after some persuasion from her parents, is allowed to go. It’s the beginning of the 60s.
After some effort choosing the right dress, Priscilla sees Elvis sitting on a sofa for the first time, surrounded by a group of people. The two are introduced to each other and start a conversation. When he asks what grade she’s in – ninth grade – he shouts: “You’re still a baby!” Elvis is ten years older than Priscilla, which doesn’t diminish his interest in her. When he suggests going to his room, a murmur goes through the German cinema hall. In the film, however, the age difference between the two lovers is not scandalized, and is even only discussed in passing. When the mother asks why Elvis can’t find a girlfriend his age.
Still Got to School: Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley
Quelle: Sabrina Lantos/A24 Distribution, LLC
The fact that he doesn’t get outraged is one of the film’s strengths. Coppola tells the life from Priscilla’s perspective and stays very close to her biography. A large part of the dialogue is taken one-to-one from the book. And Priscilla didn’t care about her age, she was in love. From this love an unlikely story emerged. She is the one Coppola wants to tell.
Lonely and controlled
When you watch, you’re always amazed that the two of them actually found each other – and stayed together for as long as they did. That Priscilla’s parents could always be persuaded despite the age difference. That the global star Elvis has not forgotten her – and other friends – even after years in the USA. That in the end he brings her in and the two get married. That, as it says in Priscilla’s biography, they actually wait until the wedding to have sex – even if they try “other things”. Again and again it is Elvis who interrupts erotic kisses and urges restraint. Much to Priscilla’s frustration. Sometimes it seems like a demonstration of power by the all-determining centerpiece, Elvis Presley.
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As soon as Priscilla meets Elvis, everything revolves around him. The days on the calendar become a single countdown until their next meeting. Once she’s in Graceland, she adapts her daily routine to his. Even though Elvis parties all night and sleeps until noon – and even though she has to go to school during the day. Stimulus pills that she gets from Elvis help her. He tells how she should dress and make up. She tries everything to conform to his ideal of a woman, keeps her shoulders back, walks through the apartment with books on her head. Even when her water breaks, Priscilla sticks on long eyelashes before driving to the hospital. The relationship with Elvis remains lonely. His voice can only be heard again and again through the telephone. He’s on film sets in other cities, with other women. There is a distance between them that Priscilla constantly and in vain tries to overcome.
Coppola distills these lonely moments in the large, quiet house through which Priscilla wanders lost. She’s not allowed to take a job and has to be on call when Elvis calls. The star is not ahead of his misogynistic time, he likes his women “classic”. When he’s there, everything turns into the opposite: there’s a constant party in the house, Elvis is constantly surrounded by an entourage of friends and employees. Priscilla is actually only alone with her husband in the bedroom. Even when she tells him she’s pregnant, she shares this with a room full of people.
A sad boy
Elvis’ behavior towards his wife would probably be described as toxic today. He controls what she wears, who she meets, how she keeps herself busy. If Priscilla doesn’t behave accordingly, he withdraws his love. Your beloved center of life is moody and sometimes choleric. In a scene that Priscilla also describes in her biography, he asks her for her opinion on a song. When she says she doesn’t like it, a chair flies towards her and smashes into the wall. Immediately afterwards he is at her side and assures her that he didn’t mean it that way.
Your Guru: Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley
Quelle: Ken Woroner/A24 Distribution, LLC
Despite this abuse and his whims, and this is a collaborative effort between Coppola and her cast Jacob Elordi, Elvis is not a villain. Elordi plays the singer with a vulnerable boyishness, who often seems like a child in his grief for his mother. A sensitive, immature man who is destroyed by the show business of the 60s. Constantly concerned about maintaining his success, his contracts are dictated to him by others. He makes films he doesn’t like and signs deals he knows nothing about. Elvis takes refuge in pills.
“Priscilla” seems a bit like the story of a cult member who was brainwashed at a young age. And whose entire identity lies in love for the leader. Priscilla can only find her way out of her own life by building confidence in her own abilities through karate lessons. Priscilla says at the end that she would not leave him for another man, but for a life of her own. As she leaves the gates of Graceland behind her, she does so to the strains of Dolly Parton’s “I will always love you.”
The song and Elvis have two stories. First, Elvis is said to have sung it to Priscilla on the courthouse steps after their divorce. Secondly, he wanted to cover him, but was never allowed to. Dolly Parton wanted to retain her copyright to the song, as she did in an interview told. In addition, the manner of Elvis’ manager was too rough for her. This leaves Dolly Parton as one of the few women who said “no” to Elvis Presley back then.
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