Priscilla: a bold feminist retelling of Elvis’ dark fairytale marriage

In director Sofia Coppola’s new biopic Priscilla, we meet the long run Mrs Presley in 1959 when she is a typical 14-year-old all-American schoolgirl, hanging out at a diner and sipping a Coke. She meets the 24-year-old Elvis Presley throughout his army service and the 2 start a healthful romance of cinema dates and hangouts, regardless of her mother and father’ considerations over the age distinction.

Over the course of the connection, we see Priscilla develop from girlhood to womanhood. She strikes to Graceland. She graduates from highschool. The 2 get married and have a toddler.

On the floor, the story of Elvis and his spouse Priscilla has all of the qualities of a contemporary fairy story. The lifetime of an bizarre lady is reworked by an opportunity encounter with a good-looking stranger. She turns into queen to the “King of Rock and Roll” they usually dwell fortunately ever after of their Memphis palace.

Look deeper, nevertheless, and their story wasn’t fairly so image good. Coppola’s biopic the truth is exposes the darkish coronary heart of this fairytale. Graceland emerges as much less of a palace and extra of a gilded cage the place the teenage Priscilla turns into the weak Magnificence to Elvis’ more and more unstable Beast.

Priscilla is the proper companion piece to Coppola’s 2006 biopic Marie Antoinette. Each movies discover the lives of younger girls who’re thrust into the highlight and should navigate the pressures of their newfound fame amid a suffocating relationship with a robust man.

The lens of #MeToo

This can be a coming-of-age story. The viewers watches as Priscilla matures below the shadow of Elvis’ controlling affect. She isn’t allowed guests. He picks her outfits. He tells her to put on make-up. He instructs her to dye her black hair, eerily mimicking his personal signature look.

She endures this management whereas Elvis receives love letters from different girls and rumours of his affairs with co-stars flow into within the tabloids, together with actress Anne-Margaret and singer Nancy Sinatra. Priscilla can also be caught within the throes of Elvis’ spiralling drug habit and violent outbursts.

The #MeToo feminist panorama has formed the story Coppola tells about Elvis and Priscilla. The Twitter hashtag #MeToo was popularised in 2017 to show the widespread abuse of girls in Hollywood by the movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Since then, #MeToo has impressed a broader shift in feminist pondering and artwork.

Priscilla is the most recent in a cycle of post-#MeToo feminist retellings that provide a extra sympathetic tackle girls within the highlight. The Priscilla biopic relies on the star’s personal 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me”.

In an interview in Leisure Weekly, Priscilla expresses her respect for Coppola as a feminist filmmaker and describes the movie as “proper on” in its portrayal of her turbulent marriage. She additionally supported Coppola’s movie as an govt producer.

Energy and abuse

Depicting a much-loved icon with something apart from reverence is certain to impress criticism. Lisa Marie Presley, the late daughter of Elvis and Priscilla, expressed outrage in the direction of Coppola’s movie for making her father out to be “a predator and manipulative”.

The movie makes a remark about how highly effective males are in a position to abuse their positions. It affords a helpful reinterpretation of the celebrated “King of Rock and Roll” that speaks to our modern second by which widespread entertainers are being held accountable for his or her actions.

Coppola’s script emphasises the unequal energy dynamic between Elvis and Priscilla, together with the age distinction. The movie forces the viewers to confront this uncomfortable element, with quite a few references to Priscilla being “a child” and “only a child”. Cailee Spaeny convincingly embodies the essence of the younger Priscilla, drawn in by Jacob Elordi’s enchanting however sinister Elvis.

This alludes to a wider difficulty: the dearth of care in the direction of girls and women within the leisure trade. Whereas protesting their teenage daughter’s relationship with an older man, Priscilla’s mother and father nonetheless drive her to events at Elvis’ home and permit her to remain at Graceland with out their supervision.

The movie exhibits how a poisonous mix of fame, wealth and standing attracts folks into Elvis’ orbit and, in flip, how his star energy permits him to behave in methods which can be hardly ever challenged by these round him.

Priscilla is a courageous and poignant biopic that peels again the glittering facade of Elvis and Priscilla’s fairytale. By Coppola’s feminist storytelling, we see that even the brightest stars forged lengthy shadows.

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