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Update | Venice 2023: Priscilla movie review – Lost in Translation’s Sofia Coppola profiles Elvis Presley’s ex-wife in bittersweet biopic
- Adapted from Priscilla Presley’s book Elvis and Me, the film stars Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla, a role for which she won best actress at the Venice Film Festival
- Meanwhile, Jacob Elordi is the king of rock ’n’ roll. Coppola does not avoid the difficult aspects of their relationship, and the film truly captures the era
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3.5/5 stars
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A young girl crosses a pink fluffy carpet barefoot – the very first shot of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla is as delicate as you might expect from the director of Lost in Translation.
Coppola, who returns to the Venice International Film Festival competition where she won the Golden Lion for 2010’s Somewhere, brings her inimitable style to this biopic of Priscilla Presley, based on the latter’s book Elvis and Me. And for a while it fascinates, as a 15-year-old girl from Austin, Texas, meets and falls for the king of rock ’n’ roll.
A splendid Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim Uprising) stars as Priscilla, beginning in 1959, when she was living in West Germany with her army family. It is here where she is introduced to Elvis (Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi), doing his military service.
After time apart, Elvis calls and she convinces her parents to let her go to Memphis, Tennessee, and move into the singer’s Graceland home. Still only 17, she enrols in a Catholic school to graduate, and even bribes a fellow pupil to help her cheat in her exams.
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Coppola, who adapted the book, does not hold back on the more difficult aspects of their relationship, from Elvis’ notorious reliance on prescription pills to his controlling behaviour or even his propensity for violence.
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