Priscilla

When shy teenager Priscilla Beaulieu first meets the legendary rockstar Elvis Presley at a party, the pair discovers an unexpected connection, a connection that will ultimately change both their lives, and forever tie them both together in the minds of the world.

Part beloved teenage dream, part parents’ worst nightmare, Priscilla tells Priscilla’s story, spanning from her first time meeting Elvis, to the beginning of the end of their marriage. The tone of the film is pretty obvious and unsurprising from the start, especially if you’ve ever seen a Sofia Coppola film before. Suffused with feelings of isolation and captivity--illustrated through the art hung on the walls of a lonely middle class teenager’s bedroom--and a vague longing expressed through pop culture worship, all of which then morphs into the quiet desperation brought on by the confines of marriage and traditional gender roles, Priscilla is cast in the usual soft pink hues and chiffon-draped innocence that one can reasonably expect at this point from a Sofia Coppola movie.

Honestly, with each film that Sofia Coppola makes, she somehow makes one that is even more Sofia Coppola-y than the last one.

The film starts with 14 year old Priscilla sitting alone at the counter in the Army base malt shoppe in Germany where her father is stationed. She is approached by a man who has very obviously targeted her specifically in order to introduce her to Elvis Presley. The film doesn’t mention how often this particular man--an officer in the Army and a friend of Presley--and his wife, have performed this particular role for Presley, before he finally meets Priscilla, but he seems very practiced at it, and is more than ready to allay all the reasonable suspicions from the very excited young girls' parents. This is called ”child enticement“ and it is a part of a myriad of offenses such as prostitution, child pornography, sex trafficking, and kidnapping.

Hail to the King, baby, right?

Anyway, Priscilla is a shy and tiny little thing in furry sweaters, her bedroom littered with Elvis pictures, magazines, and records, a literal child who demurely carries the secret of her and Elvis’ first kiss through the halls of her high school. After that, no matter how it may have been intended to be presented, Elvis’ every moment of attention on this actual tiny baby can't help but feel vaguely sinister and predatory, not to mention manipulative and creepy.

Because Elvis is obviously grooming her.

I know that Jerry Lee Lewis got a bunch of shit for doing this exact same kind of thing, but was that because Jerry Lee was marrying his cousin, or because he was also marrying a child? I wonder if it was the cousin thing that more upset America, because I don’t think Elvis got as much shit for this, right? I assume no, because Elvis was America’s golden child at that point, especially once he had joined the Army and those dirty hippy long hairs had started to appear on the music scene.

And even though I see it happen in the film, that her parents are obviously concerned, and are then convinced by a barrage of assurances from Elvis and his support system, I can’t help but wonder… How could her parents agree to this? To their child dating a grown man? At one point, they even agree to send her off from Germany to America, alone, to live with Elvis and his sycophantic hillbilly family, where she will then finish high school, while living with him as his girlfriend. That’s just… unbelievable.

How could they send their baby off to fuck a pop star?

But they do, and once Priscilla arrives at Graceland--Ground Zero for the tackiest shit imaginable--she’s like a cloistered princess wandering the empty halls of her Lord Husband’s castle, alone, a prisoner within its high walls and plush confines, all while her Lord Husband is off Crusading.

She has nothing to do. She can’t invite anyone over. She can’t get a job. She can’t even play with her dog in the front yard. She is to wait by the phone for Elvis’ call. While never outwardly stated, it’s clear she is to have nothing but Elvis, no love, no wants, no other interests at all, nothing but Elvis. He picks her clothes, he controls what she does, who she sees, and how she acts, both in public, as well as in private, all while he is free to gallivant across the globe, and most likely sleep with a ton of other women. Through it all, Priscilla is supposed to be the ready and willing saintly mother waiting for him at home.

Definitely emotionally abusive, probably physically abusive, and given to fits of drug-fueled, petulant rage, as well as a rotating list of all-consuming obsessions, from LSD, to new age guru nonsense, and of course the typical Bible bullshit, Elvis is constantly withholding his love, when he isn't insinuating to Priscilla that he might replace her, if she upsets him too much.

He is a classic abuser.

It’s clear that Elvis only wants to keep her like a doll, locked away in his massive dollhouse, to be displayed with it suits him. Soon enough, Priscilla learns to obey, to flatter, to never challenge, to tamp down her emotions, and most importantly, to mask herself, to become a quiet and beehived little robot in fake eyelashes and sad eyes, always smiling meekly as she stands next to him, and forever following one dutiful step behind Him.

Playing a more sedate and less exaggerated Elvis Presley than Austin Butler’s version, this version of Elvis focuses more on his manipulative immaturity, his sudden temper tantrum bursts of anger, his petulance, as well as his near constant need for attention and validation, something that often manifests itself in the same way a kool-aid stained kid might shout “Watch this,” before jumping something on his bike. He’s the kind of guy who reads slowly and out loud while everyone else is watching TV, not just because he’s a dipshit, which he is, but because he needs to disrupt everyone and everything, at all times, in any way that he can, all so that he is always the center of attention.

He’s not just overindulged and irresponsible, he’s also a pill popping fiend, his daily life for so long so dependent on a pharmaceutical cornucopia of all stripes that he knew nothing else. Early on, he gives Priscilla army-issued speed because their many late night dates are causing her to fall asleep in school. At one point, at Graceland, he casually drugs her, and she’s out for two days, and when she finally wakes up again, he whisks her off to Vegas, a coiffed and painted-up 16 year old baby out on the town in Sin City, drunk as shit and popping pills.

I’m not sure if this was Coppola’s intention or not, because at times it feels like she’s indulging in the vague Teen Beat “romance” of it all, and at others times, it feels like she’s wallowing in her own personal favorite focus, the sad loneliness of pampered princesses, but either way, it’s impossible to see this story as anything else than the tale of a grown man who steals a family’s child, and then makes her his wife. And the whole time, he is an overgrown child himself, taking his tiny little doll of a wife and his gaggle of Dixie Mafia idiot buddies, hanger-ons, and yes-men, on every indulgence of whim, spending most of their time renting out bumper cars alleys and roller rinks for the evening, all while fucked up on pills and booze, all of them armed to the teeth, whooping and wilding and stumbling about. It's asshole privilege as a lifestyle, and it’s nauseating.

Later, Elvis buys Priscilla a gun, the first of many, which is the truest expression of love in America.

Based on Priscilla Presley’s autobiography, the film claims that Elvis remained chaste with Priscilla, only knocking her up immediately after they got married. It also doesn’t show the consummation, despite featuring multiple moments where Elvis denies a randy and willing Priscilla, and while I kind of buy the idea of his chastity with her because of all his weird “Mom as a Saint” bullshit, I wonder if the decision to not show, or to even imply their consummation, is really a commentary of sorts on how it’s obviously a lie that the pair remained chaste until Priscilla was of legal age, and also properly wed to Elvis.

Who knows...

Anyway, a sad and haunting portrait of a young girl plucked from her childhood bedroom by a manipulative pedophile, and then set adrift into a tumultuous life of forced idleness and total public scrutiny, Priscilla the film doesn’t exactly tell us anything new, so much as it puts a spotlight on just how fucking creepy the whole thing was.

Overall, this is a good film. Sofia Coppola makes good movies, even if, like Wes Anderson, her films feature a pretty familiar litany of peccadillos and bugaboos. But yeah, it’s a good movie. That said, if you have any good feelings left about Elvis Presley at all, the man most famous for being the first of many white artists to steal Black music and then market it to White people as their own, you won’t have any left after watching this film…

Because Elvis is a creep.