At 25 and 5’1″ , Cailee Spaeny is at once older and short than the character she plays inSofia Coppola‘s late daydream of fame and fortune as a imprisoned State Department . It ’s the height we notice . “ She ’s like a picayune girl , ” someone says of Priscilla Beaulieu , a teenager swept into the glamourous life of an grownup superstar . In realness , Elvis Presley had 10 years , but only six inches on her . Priscillaexaggerates the tallness disparity to emphasize the years col . Placed next to all 6 foot , 5 inch of Jacob Elordi , this Priscilla truly looks like a child . Which , of course , is what she was when she met the King just 14 year into her life .
Their first encounter was in West Germany in 1959 . He was stationed there a couple twelvemonth into his military service . She was an Army bratwurst . A ally of Elvis spotted her at a café and offer to take her to a political party to meet the biggest star in the world — an invitation that looks suspiciously like a scouting mission . “ She ’s a lot more ripe than her eld , ” Presley would by and by tell Priscilla ’s parent when they asked why a adult piece of his renown was pursuing their daughter , a ninth - grader . It ’s the sort of affair adults say when they ’re seducing children .
Priscillaarrives one year afterElvis , Baz Luhrmann ’s frenetic biopic gala affair , which took the wide opinion of its subject ’s life and career , trying to capture decades of ethnic encroachment across a few hours . There , the next Mrs. Presley was played by Olivia DeJonge , convinced and bubbly in a performance brief enough to be called a cameo . Luhrmann seemed to take the notion that the two were kindred spirits merge by loneliness at font value . Coppola , music director of such portraits of uneasy youth asThe Virgin SuicidesandSomewhere , is more concerned in the fundamental imbalance of their human relationship — the inequities created by eld and gender and the bold exercising weight of supernova stardom .
The early shot have some of the dreamy melancholy of her breakthrough , miss in Translation , another film about an older human being and a young woman cope with in a area that ’s not their own , and bandaging their reciprocal homesickness with a sexless romance . Elordi ’s Elvis is all aw - red cent sincerity — downtuning his charm to Priscilla ’s adolescent wavelength , doing a kind of intimate , acoustic rendition of his magazine appeal . The Aussie actor is n’t a utter toller for the real Presley , but like Austin Butler , he ’s channeling more than imitating . In silhouette , the illusion is convincing . Coppola punch us into the allure of Elvis without using much of his music — a neat trick , that .
“ Promise you ’ll last out the room you are now , ” he articulate to his sweetheart , decent before leaving her in a crew of yell fan and fly back to the flashbulbs of Hollywood and Nashville . Two old age glide by before he ’ll unfreeze her with his attention again . It ’s the girl ’s naturalness he covets and fetishizes , her youth he want to put behind glass like a gold record book . Coppola , forever attune to the fretful desire of girls cage in by sumptuousness , contrasts Priscilla ’s blossoming sexuality with the King ’s fixation with her pureness . He desire a doll , not a devotee ; he reserve his own libido for the various co - stars and celebrity he beds on the side .
You could call this the anti - Elvis , both in its minute , immanent focus — the antithesis of Luhrmann ’s Wikipedia review — and its refusal to indulge a mythic perspective on Elvis himself , who ’s portrayed as an emotionally wanting restraint freak . Drawing from her subject ’s memoir , Coppola come after an arc of awakening , as Priscilla grows from blushing child Saint Brigid to discontent prize married woman , the tractor beam of showbiz attraction gradually weaken as the fairy tale tire out off . Coppola does n’t hasten that dawning awareness . Part of the calculative emotional intelligence service ofPriscillais how it frames the courtship through the girl ’s besotted eyes while letting us see how much of a teenager she really was . Spaeny resists all enticement to take Presley ’s complimentary remarks as direction , to roleplay Priscilla too mature or worldly , too wise beyond her age .
Like Coppola ’s Marie Antoinette , she descend into an arranged matrimony of sorts ( “ I ’ll treat that , ” Elvis promise any time the matter of parental license number up ) , and is whip off to an American castle , the Southern manor house of Graceland . She is always or never alone — left to drop like an ornament during the recollective months when Elvis is shooting or touring , then surrounded by his Memphis Mafia son ’s baseball club when he ’s house . One might think , too , of Princess Diana whenever the in - jurisprudence are tightening the proverbial blind and warning of the eyes watching beyond the gate . The tragedy of the story is of someone swallow by her proximity to fame ; she can only be an accessory to the behemoth she ’s married — a beautiful prolongation of his star power .
The elegant interior decoration , the gorgeous dresses , the cars and downright designer pets lavished as gift — as usual , Coppola revels in the cosmetic trappings of a sentence in the doll’s house . And in real cosmetics , too — the film opens in mass medium res with Priscilla use makeup in close - up , and only later on doubles back to give us the full absurd circumstance of her preparations , a beauty regime foist upon someone whose every life experience has become a Porto Rico chance or public spectacle . You almost have to marvel if this cloth istoogood a paroxysm for Coppola . There ’s no rubbing between Priscilla ’s confining pipe dream life and the director ’s worldwide preoccupation with wealthiness as a coop , search in almost every similarly poetic drama she ’s made before this one .
And for all the waysPriscillafunctions as an opposite ofElvis , the two picture show arguably yield to the same deflating outcome — the inevitable crumble into the bad prison term . The picture show ’s final stretch is a free burning blur of sadness , a slow - motion comedown . Priscilla , waking from the dream that consumed her childhood , in the end see her animation for what it ’s become : a decadent house of cards of tedium and loneliness , free of office . At a certain degree , the consultation may feel trap in that bubble with her , and just as eager to get the netherworld out of Graceland .
