“I don’t know if I like it”: Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla in all its flawed glory

by Emily Costello.

I walked into the cinema to watch Priscilla(2023) wanting so badly to love it. Sofia Coppola has been one of my most praised directors since her feature directorial debut The Virgin Suicides(1999) which encapsulated the complexities of girlhood and all its darkness. Her historical drama Marie Antoinette (2007) portrays her as complex and almost relatable, albeit with slight historical embellishments, again with frequent themes of girlhood and youthful femininity as more multifaceted Another of my favourites is her “so bad its good” crime teen drama The Bling Ring (2013) surrounding a group of teenagers breaking into rich celebrity homes and robbing millions in clothes and jewelry. The film is deliciously camp, based on a true story, and like her other films mentioned portrays a morally grey experience of adolescence.

Sofia Coppola is perhaps most famous for her aesthetic: dainty coloured lighting, pink and blue pastels, femininity, vintage clothes and perfume bottles. It's more than just visual, her aesthetic aims to capture the essence of being a woman, no matter how violent. The Lisbon sisters' messy room is not just a messy room, it's an ode to girlhood, its freedoms, and its curses. Marie Antoinette’s opulent shoe collection, her delicate pastries, and cakes are more than just food, they represent her frivolity and her youth. An article on aesthetics and Sofia Coppola’s style specifically in the Washington Post said “The look of her films often is the plot”. Her soundtracks are always meticulously selected and fit perfectly for her aesthetic choices in her films. Coppola masters her unique directing style and has gone from strength to strength as her career has developed.

Priscilla is Coppola’s masterpiece in her own personal aestheticism. Brimming with femininity and encapsulating all the charms of the 50s/60s era, the film oozes with Coppola’s touch and is very beautiful to watch. The soundtrack is stellar despite being denied the use of Elvis’ music by his estate, which I think benefitted the film rather than hindered it as Coppola’s picks are both memorable and enjoyable. Priscilla also deals with themes of girlhood and depicts the complex relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley from her perspective. The performances by both Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla and Jacob Elordi as Elvis himself are excellent and engaging. All components that should make for a fast favourite. Yet the film felt flimsy. There was no substance and the plot fell flat. It could be due to the subject material as the film is partly based on Priscilla's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N’Roll and was backed and aided by Priscilla herself. The message the film is attempting to make just feels wishy-washy and unclear, again perhaps due to Priscilla’s retellings of the events.

At points, it is implied Elvis groomed Priscilla, both through the script and Coppola’s aesthetic storytelling yet the relationship seems heavily glamourised. Whether intentional or not, this romanticisation can be dangerous, especially when her audience of young girls and women is considered. In fact, like many of Coppola’s works, the film has blown up on the popular social media app TikTok with many teenagers editing the romance to melodic melancholic songstress Lana Del Rey who both encapsulates Coppola’s aesthetic of womanhood but has also had her fair share of criticisms due to her perceived idealisation of potentially abusive relationships. Copolla may have intended to depict the beautiful bubble of girlish love from young Priscilla’s perspective and emphasise the dangers of their relationship with this angle, yet without any depth of exploration it falls a little flat.

For example, after Priscilla and Elvis meet in West Germany and begin courting, he leaves to return to the US and she is left to pine after him in her boring repetitive life with her family. It's in this sequence that through her aesthetic and montage editing Coppola emphasises to the audience Priscilla’s age and youthfulness. She agonises over her love letters to Elvis, flips through magazines of his face, gazes at his vinyl with tender care in her girlish pink patterned bed with cuts to her porcelain figures and ballerina music box. The visuals speak for themselves; the spectator is firmly reminded Priscilla is fourteen, still a young girl, and is being ‘courted’ by a much older man. She is living in her fantasy, yet it feels intensely wrong to the viewer. This feels like a successful criticism of the relationship by Coppola but when compared to later scenes set at Graceland fails to land. Elvis moves Priscilla out to Memphis at seventeen and whilst Coppola does portray his encouragement of her using drugs and his neglect of her emotional state generally, there are times when the portrait of their relationship seems a little too magical. For example, one scene set in Graceland shows the couple playing around with a Polaroid camera, being playful, giggling, and dressing up, appearing like a dream relationship. It's the ultimate girlish teenage fantasy. The effect of such a glamourisation of a predatory relationship, whether to reflect Priscilla’s younger biased mindset or not, is undeniable.

So can a film, or even a director, survive on just aesthetics? Famously beautiful films like Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) display signature style and aesthetics but also have engaging and gripping plots. Japanese animated film studio Studio Ghibli places focus on the beauty of the visuals of the films rather than the storyline but again, the plot is often enjoyable if not deeply thematic and moving. So it is possible that whilst films can be enjoyed purely for their visual aesthetics, to hold up as a ‘good’ film an enjoyable plot may be necessary.

Although I enjoyed the soundtrack, marveled at the beauty of the film, and was entranced by the performances given by both Spaeny and Elordi, at the end of the screening I left feeling plain bored. I sympathised with Priscilla, cried when she cried, laughed when she laughed and hated Elvis throughout, but I felt the film made no statement about him or their relationship. Coppola’s aesthetic, mastered as it was, didn’t seem to hold up as strongly compared to her past films, like Marie Antoinette, and opens up larger questions about visually pleasing films as a whole and whether films have to make statements about the actions of their subjects or not. Unlike her larger body of work, Priscilla at times felt like far too much style and not nearly enough substance.

by Emily Costello, March 2024.

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