Sofia Coppola finally makes her poor-little-rich-girl epic.
Sofia Coppola, 52-year-old daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, is a figure of such Hollywood privilege that her emotional, artistic, fantasy life finds its perfect parallel in Priscilla Beaulieu, the military brat who, at age 14, met Elvis Presley and lived with him for four years before becoming his wife in 1967. The new biopic Priscilla, Sofia’s version of these events (based on Beaulieu-Presley’s memoir), is her most accomplished film.
This time, Sofia nearly justifies her accolades as America’s ultimate female filmmaker. Debuting as a ’90s hipster director, Sofia has built a reputation as a feminist standard-bearer that is not unfounded, yet Priscilla is least convincing when its heroine proclaims her independence. (“You’re losing me to a life of my own.”) The best scenes are the girliest ones: Priscilla (played by tiny brunette Cailee Spaeny) wearing red toenail polish as she steps through plush carpet, or sauntering down her school corridor wrapped in a pink angora sweater to the ecstatic pace of Tommy James and the Shondells’ immortal “Crimson and Clover.”
Sofia’s accent on feminine luxe, like the soft-core image of Scarlett Johansson’s panty-hosed rump that began Lost in Translation, confounds the academic notion of “the male gaze.” Sofia’s female gaze glories in Priscilla’s sensual being: specifically her menarche-awareness that gets ignited by pop music’s king. The idea is that Elvis anoints Priscilla’s demure femininity, but Sofia shows it as exquisite teenage girliness. Frankie Avalon’s soaring ballad “Venus” provides a meaningful epiphany. (“Make my dreams come true.”) This is beyond pop-culture nostalgia — it’s fetishization. (The erotic predisposition evokes Dorothy Arzner, the lesbian mentor to Sofia’s father at USC.) More important, Sofia’s enraptured, delicately focused visual poetry meets T. S. Eliot’s definition of objective correlative: “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.”
The gentle piano notes of “Love Me Tender,” conjured while Priscilla does arithmetic homework, convey annunciation. Her Elvis-ordered future brings her private diary to life. Actor Jacob Elordi basks in Elvisness — a tall, elongated ideal of sex, talent, adoration. He speaks in a polite baritone (except for one slip into Nic Cage’s adenoidal Peggy Sue Gets Married voice — a family in-joke, although in Sofia’s cosmology, all men are UFOs). But he’s the perfect boyfriend. “Stay the way you are,” Elvis tells Priscilla, voicing a high-school-yearbook inscription.
And then, Sofia faces life: Priscilla slowly breaks out of her hazy love cocoon. Elvis introduces her to his Memphis Mafia entourage, his grandmother, his mother-derived temper — and drugs (500 mg of Placiderm knocks her out for two days, then LSD experimentation). At first, his Southern chivalry leaves her sexually frustrated. (“We have to control our desires, or our desires will control us.”) She’s a princess waiting to be ravished. Instead, they have pillow fights that turn rough (“You only want to play when you win!”). And Elvis’s mantra of celibacy — “Keep the home fires burning” — leaves her unsatisfied. “We can do other things,” Elvis assures her, which leads to a ’90s-style fashion-show shopping montage where Sofia reveals her idiocy.
Sofia’s juvenile portrayal of marriage recalls the sexlessness of her Marie Antoinette (2006), in which side-by-side bedmates honor only the woman’s forbearance. This victim’s vision seems weird and fraudulent when Priscilla casually color-coordinates derringer pistols with designer dresses. Submitting to a jet-black beehive hairdo to resemble the tasteless, costumed King of Rock and Roll, she’s more than a trophy wife, she’s Elvis’s doll — his Barbie.
***
Sofia Coppola’s personal use of pop music rivals Scorsese and Tarantino. She doesn’t need Elvis songs since her playlist indicates a genuine obsession. When newborn, Sofia was cast as Michael Corleone’s niece for the baptism montage in The Godfather, so she has no firsthand experience of the late-’50s, early-’60 pop culture that creates Priscilla’s ambiance. Each song choice is apposite — a jazz version of Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar?” introduces Elvis’s Vegas residency. “Honeybee,” by Fontella Bass, accompanies Priscilla’s female-Elvis makeover, and a dramatic moment scored to Jesus and Mary Chain’s post-punk guitar fuzz uses the same cultural anachronism as Marie Antoinette, but here it’s emotionally effective.
This musical erudition distills the Elvis-mania made popular by the Broadway show Bye, Bye Birdie — going deeper than the “How Lovely to Be a Woman” number (performed in the film adaptation by Ann-Margret, target of Priscilla’s jealous snark). Sofia also evokes Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” Her only misstep is to validate Priscilla’s divorce through Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” an unoriginal choice proving that, when it comes to mature self-awareness, when she needs to be adult and hard-nosed, Sofia remains tone-deaf — with the eccentricity of a gifted, spoiled brat.