Venice Film Festival 2023 reviews: Sofia Coppola’s biopic ‘Priscilla’ is ‘enchanting,’ ‘quietly extraordinary,’ ‘absorbing’ and ‘piercingly honest’
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“Priscilla” premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival on Monday, September 4. Written and directed by Oscar winner Sofia Coppola – who won for her original screenplay of “Lost in Translation” in 2004 – it’s her first film since “On the Rocks” in 2020. The A24 release “Priscilla” is adapted from Priscilla Beaulieu Presley’s acclaimed 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” recounting her tumultuous relationship with Elvis Presley from the age of 14 when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was at the height of his fame. It’s described, “Through Priscilla’s eyes, Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland.” As such, it is said to paint a far more nuanced and complex/negative portrayal of Elvis than did last year’s Baz Luhrmann biopic.
The film stars Cailee Spaeny, who had a small role in 2021’s “Mare of Easttown” and portrayed Anna Eleanor Roosevelt in the Showtime limited series “The First Lady,” plays Priscilla. Jacob Elordi, one of the stars of HBO’s “Euphoria” as well as the “The Kissing Booth” films, portrays Elvis. Elordi also has a role in the forthcoming Emerald Fennell feature “Saltburn” that premiered last week at Telluride.
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SEESofia Coppola’s ‘Priscilla’ set for North American debut at New York Film Festival
Early reviews for “Priscilla” have been overwhelmingly positive, including a few outright raves that favorably compare the film to Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” and prefer it over Luhrmann’s “Elvis.” As of this writing, it rates an 83 on Metacritic based on 16 reviews (14 positive and two mixed). It also rates 95% Fresh at the moment on Rotten Tomatoes, with just one review out of 19 less than fully positive.
Here are a few of those:
Marlow Stern writes in Rolling Stone, “Spaeny, who is 25 but makes for a convincing teenager, is an absolute marvel, nailing Priscilla’s complicated melange of emotions – the wide-eyed wonderment and youthful desire, the apprehension and fear – while Elordi’s Elvis feels more grounded in reality than Austin Butler’s pouty hip-shaker. He is sexy and charming, yes, but also dangerous and at times, terrifying…You couldn’t ask for a better person to handle this material than Coppola, who’s no stranger to depicting young female protagonists and the powerful men who enjoy keeping them locked in gilded cages, whether it be the Grand Hyatt Hotel, the Chateau Marmont, the Palace of Versailles or Graceland…People may fault Coppola for dipping her toe into familiar terrain, but it’s hard to argue with the result: a transportive, heartbreaking journey into the dark heart of celebrity, and her finest film since ‘Lost in Translation’.”
Stephanie Zacharek says in Time, “Have you ever had an intense experience – fallen madly in love, say – only to look back years later and feel it happened to a different person, a person who had walked through a dream, and survived it, to get to the self you were destined to become? That’s the feeling Sofia Coppola captures in her quietly extraordinary ‘Priscilla’…The movie is so intimate it seems to take place inside a seashell, with both the coziness and claustrophobia that implies…Elordi makes a fine Elvis, though a very different one from the flashy performer Austin Butler gave us last year. This is the private Elvis, and Elordi plays him as a man who floats further and further away from the woman he loves, like an astronaut whose tether has been cut.”
Peter Bradshaw notes in The Guardian, “As an insider account, this is a welcome corrective to Baz Luhrmann’s outsider fantasy Elvis and it redoubles what I think of as Coppola’s reputation as the Betty Friedan of 21st century cinema, presenting us with her distinctive take on feminine mystique.”
Owen Gleiberman (Variety) opines, “In the 17 years since ‘Marie Antoinette,’ (Coppola) has grown as a filmmaker – her storytelling now has an organic detail and emotional precision that sweep you right up…She tells this story with open eyes, so that we’re caught up, for a while, in the otherworldly entrancement of what it would mean to have the biggest star on the planet choose you to be his princess. The film ushers us right into Graceland, showing us what happened, just as it happened, without sweetener or frills.” He continues, “The daring thing Coppola does is to present the rise and fall of Priscilla and Elvis’s relationship as a diary, one that simply flows forward in a kind of objective Zen fashion, never trumping anything up.” He concludes, “Early on, Priscilla tells us her favorite song of his is ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’ ‘Priscilla’ is a piercingly honest drama about how she wound up living there.”
David Ehrlich writes in IndieWire that “Priscilla” “stands apart from the rest of Coppola’s work as the uniquely sensitive and self-honest portrait of a girl who starts to realize that she may have outgrown her greatest fantasy.” He also praises Elordi’s “immediately convincing” portrayal of Elvis and notes that the film “never renders him a monster. On the contrary, it paints him as a (very flawed) real person who’s similarly entombed by the image that’s been created for him.”
Then there is this from Savina Petkova in Awardswatch: “‘Priscilla’ is a precious film, not only for its unsung history, but also as an ode to all the women who can love and feel alone in that love at once; to those who are supposed to be quiet, who are told to shut up, or have had a chair thrown at them (like Elordi’s character does at one point). Upon her return, Sofia Coppola has made a rich and empathetic biopic that doesn’t need to sacrifice a man to shine a light on a woman.”
Based solely on this early “Priscilla” critique, Coppola has to be considered a solid contender for a directorial and/or writing bid at next year’s Academy Awards, while Spaeny and Elordi will likely be in the performer contending discussion. Coppola’s three past Oscar nominations all came for “Lost in Translation,” for her writing, directing and producing the Best Picture nominee. “Lost” remains her most buzzworthy work, though her resume also notably includes “Marie Antoinette,” “The Virgin Suicides” and “Somewhere.”
Following its Venice world premiere, “Priscilla” makes its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 6 before A24 releases it in theaters on November 3.
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