Venice Mostra | Sofia Coppola hides behind Priscilla Presley

2023-09-04 19:21:09

It is entirely reasonable to assume that after ‘Elvis’ (2022), the bombastic and very long biopic directed by Baz Luhrmann, there is not much left to tell about the King of rock and roll. In that sense, however, in defense of the film that Sophia Coppola has been submitted to the competition at the Mostra, it must be said that her approach to the character is so different that, if it were not for the fact that the director began working on her long before that predecessor existed, it would be tempting to assume that she has conceived it as a rebuttal . If ‘Elvis’ treated the musician as a victim at the hands of his ‘manager’, the terrible Colonel Parker, ‘Priscilla‘ holds that the true victim among all the residents of Graceland, she was the woman he cast a spell on when she was just a 14-year-old girl and then systematically abused her by asserting her power and her manhood, trying to mold her to her liking, treating her like a pet to the They had to dedicate a few caresses before continuing with their things and their friends, cheating on her with other women and subjecting her to physical and psychological abuse on a regular basis until they divorced in 1973, after six years of marriage. The clarity of her arguments, yes, contrasts with the apathy and even the apparent neglect that he shows when exposing them.

Based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir, the new film features several more differences from Luhrmann’s. Does not include songs performed by the King in his soundtrack, because Elvis Presley Enterprises -the company that owns the reproduction rights of that catalogue- did not authorize its use, and it is not a festival of lights and colors but rather a succession of scenes that take place in the shadows or in insufficiently lit spaces, because that’s how gloomy, he suggests, Priscilla’s world was despite the glow of the golden cage in which she lived imprisoned. Despite the latter, however, that visual metaphor is practically the only way that Coppola uses to convey the suffering of his protagonist. The director is right not to resort to tremendousness or portray Elvis as a monster, but she does not find alternative tools to generate dramatic intensity. “I wanted to show both the reality of that romance and the illusion built around it,” Coppola assured today during her press conference at the Show. Presley, who was not next to her but sitting among the journalists in the front row, added. “I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him, he was the love of my life, it was his lifestyle that was hard for me to bear.”

Director Sofia Coppola and actress Cailee Spaeny. GUGLIELMO EATS BREAD

To a large extent for all that has been said, the result is a recreation that walks justita of personality despite the fact that, in reality, it is just another of the stories of sad girls trapped in a world of privileges that make up the bulk of Coppola’s filmography. ‘The Virgin Suicides’ (1999) stands out for being his best film; ‘María Antoinette’ (2006), for being the most daring; and ‘Lost in Translation’ (2003) and ‘Somewhere’ (2010) -which in its day was the triumph at this festival-, for being the most autobiographical; ‘Priscilla’ is perhaps the most bland.

El regreso de Hamaguchi

Also presented today in competition at the Mostra, ‘Evil does not exist’, The first film that the Japanese Ryûsuke Hamaguchi released after ‘Drive my car’ (2021) gave him the definitive international consecration -in addition to the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and the Oscar, among many other awards- is a work as strange and unpredictable as beautiful and hypnotic. At first glance, it seems to be a story about the abuses that capitalism commits on the environment: life in a peaceful town near Tokyo, something similar to a natural paradise, is threatened when its inhabitants discover that a company intends to set up shop there. a ‘glamping’ business for wealthy tourists. However, as it progresses, it changes its tone and rhythm several times, and in the process it becomes a moving parable about the generosity of nature but also its indifference to even those who try to protect it, and about the brutality of nature. that even the most peaceful animals, including humans, are capable of exercising when threatened.