Movie: Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)
Maybe Shakira's hips don't lie, but Elvis' (Jacob Elordi) do. The tantalising promises of their public appearances amount to nothing in private, where Elvis needs an emotional assistant more than a romantic partner. In Baby Doll, Elia Kazan consistently highlighted Carroll Baker's immaturity to emphasise her sexual desirability. Here Sofia Coppola too makes it a point to show how childish Priscilla (Callee Spaeny) looks in comparison to Elvis, and how that childishness is what draws him to her. However, Coppola then goes into a more provocative direction, positing that Priscilla's baby doll qualities are attractive to Elvis precisely because they provide him an excuse to not have sex with her, in the process seing him almost as a sex worker exploited by the unseen Colonel Tom Parker. Pleasuring women is his job, in Graceland he is off the clock, leaving Priscilla to wander the halls of the mansion in frustration, hoping against hope that the stage version of Elvis will match the reality. It never happens, and aside from a detour to Las Vegas (Coppola highlights the explosively bright lights of the city so much, the contrast with the brown-darkish hue of Graceland couldn't be bigger) and a brief scene where they playfully take sexy pictures of each other, Elvis and Priscilla spend most of their time together doing what ordinary middle class middle-aged couples would do. They watch some movies, have dinner, read books and have a clear division of roles. When Elvis goes on tour to work (which includes going to bed with Ann-Margret), Priscilla stays home to watch the house. And when they do have sex, Priscilla gets pregnant.
Sofia Coppola likes to explore how men withholding sex (or more precisely, sexual pleasure) can be a way of manipulating, opressing or controlling women. It's a perspective that is quite out of the ordinary in American movies, especially in combination with Coppola's commitment to be a populist formalist filmmaker, who is very much interested in making stylishly appealing movies that are willing to find entertainment in their sources of criticism. There is a scene here in which Elvis at the height of Priscilla's pregnancy crudely suggests that they should maybe spend less time together. As his attempts at nonchalant coolness can't hide his existential confusion, half his body is well lit, the other half appears in the shadow. The scene makes a point about how much Priscilla was mistreated, and works as a metaphor for the patriarchal structures women in general are faced with. But it's also leaning in on Elvis' compelling attittude and appearance, and Elordi's freedom to give a remarkably eccentric (If Jim Carrey were to play Elvis without ever deciding whether to give a dramatic or comedic performance, you might get something like this), yet extremely well controlled, portrayal. Much of the film works like this. It's serious in its criticism of the forces that made Priscilla's life impossible, while also exploiting their (aesthetic) appeal.
Elordi's approach could have easily turned Elvis into a gimmick, instead it's an extremely believable performance of a perpetually morose and bewildered man who is somewhat surprised by his power over Priscilla, but will happily experiment to what extent he can exploit it. Unsurprisingly, the Elvis estate was opposed to the movie, but Coppola is more sympathetic towards him than it may seem at first sight. Even aside from the mysterious and exploitative activities of Colonel Tom Parker, and other handlers who've figured out that Elvis being unprecedented makes him malleable, the expressive stylisation in some of the scenes in which Elvis' odiousness is especially pronounced, also serves to highlight the subjectivity of these accounts, allowing that it could be to some extent contested whether they really happened as shown. That still however leaves us with two ironies: While Elvis contrbuted to the sexual liberation of American/western society, his own wife didn't get the benefit of that, and due to the nature of their relationship even a biopic about Priscilla ultimately provides more insight into him than into her.
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