Reclaiming the Gilded Cage of Girlhood in Sofia Coppola's ‘Priscilla’
Under the pastel veneer of Sofia Coppola’s biopic of Priscilla Presley lurks an empathetic look at the trials and tribulations of modern girlhood.
When it was announced in September of 2022 that Sofia Coppola’s next feature film would be a retelling of the untold story of Priscilla Presley, based on her 1985 memoir Elvis & Me, it seemed like an opportunity for the storied woman to finally be given her due diligence as a complex figure. Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann’s June 2022 biopic epic Elvis had already been covered to death in mainstream media, thanks to its tastefully kitschy, over-the-top approach to the makings of a superstar and the method acting gimmick that it took for its leading actor to channel him. The film, doused in the glitz and glamor of Luhrmann’s signature style is more of an overly ambitious spectacle piece, resembling the larger than life theatricalities of a Las Vegas residency show, than a nuanced portrayal of the man behind the King of Rock & Roll. Elvis is depicted as an unassuming manchild whose naïveté is taken advantage of and profited from by his professional guardian/manager Colonel Tom Parker (played by Hollywood-veteran Tom Hanks in one of the worst performances of his career). Overall, Elvis is more concerned with Parker’s self-seeking enterprise to immortalize the Presley name in the public consciousness than it is with illuminating the tragic irony of the rise and fall of a global superstar. What little we did see of Priscilla is reflective of the star’s end.
In Luhrmann’s Elvis, women are seen less as fully-fledged humans and more as avenues through which Elvis’ personal trauma is explored. Priscilla is used as a fictionalized placeholder for all the women who would ultimately abandon Elvis - starting with his beloved mother Gladys, who died when he was in his early twenties leaving him bereft with an indelible Madonna-Whore complex he would impose on his lovers. A fact that is corroborated by reports of his notoriety as a high-profile albeit unconventional womanizer: His alleged affairs ranging from salacious one-night stands to grand yet impotent romantic gestures, like unsolicited two-hour-long serenades in bed. Consistent with this flattened perception of women along the debased slut vs. motherly saint spectrum Elvis’ Priscilla has no traces of being a three-dimensional being with ambitions or emotions. This is not solely Luhrmann’s fault, since a biopic that is already well over two hours long can’t be expected to give screen time to every facet of its subject’s life without going over the 4 hour mark. That said, as one watches the credits roll at the end of those frenzied 159 minutes one can’t help but wonder what untold stories lurk behind the estate approved, self-aggrandizing mythology of Elvis Presley™. One feels left in the dark when it comes to the Priscilla behind the Presley.
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