Review: 'Priscilla,' with a star-making performance by Cailee Spaeny, shows the luxurious cage of being married to Elvis

Sometimes biopic subjects get the director they need.

Elvis Presley got Baz Luhrmann, whose flamboyance and excess matched The King’s sequined swagger perfectly in “Elvis.” Conversely, the life of Priscilla Presley, the young bride of Elvis, who was hidden away like a canary in a gilded cage, is a good fit for Sofia Coppola in the beautifully rendered “Priscilla.”

The movie starts in West Germany in September 1959, when the 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (played by Cailee Spaeny) talks her dad (Ari Cohen), an U.S. Air Force captain, and mom, Ann (Dagmara Dominczyk), into letting her attend a party. She knows that someone will be attending that party: Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), 24 and already a star, though at this point he’s serving in the Army — which, as Luhrmann’s movie told us, was the suggestion of his manager, Col. Tom Parker, as a way to improve his bad-boy image.

Priscilla becomes smitten with Elvis, and seemingly vice versa — though within the restrictions of her parents, which the courtly Elvis appears to follow. By the following March, Elvis’ military service is over and he goes back home. Priscilla, seeing the movie magazine items about Elvis making out with Nancy Sinatra, thinks her brief flirtation with him is over.

But they stay in touch by phone — and in 1962, he invites her to a two-week trip in Los Angeles, where Elvis is filming a movie, and her parents agree. On a later trip, in March 1963, she goes to Graceland, Elvis’ mansion in Memphis, permanently, with her parents’ stipulation that Priscilla attend a Catholic high school to get her diploma, and that eventually she and Elvis get married.

Early on, the movie depicts how Elvis gave Priscilla amphetamines and sleeping pills so she could keep up with his hectic pace of performing and partying. Coppola also shows how Priscilla would stay at Graceland while Elvis went on the road with his buddies or to Hollywood — where the tabloids would report on Elvis’ romantic dalliances with the likes of Ann-Margret, and when Priscilla confronted Elvis, he would always deny the stories and say they were planted for the sake of publicity. (As the movie tells it — and Coppola’s script is based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir, and Priscilla is one of the film’s executive producers, so it’s her sanitized version of history — Elvis and Priscilla did not have sex until after they were married in 1967.) 

Coppola and cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd (who shot Coppola’s “The Beguiled”) capture the sumptuous surroundings of Priscilla’s life in Graceland — with ‘60s and ‘70s details meticulously rendered by production designer Tamara Deverell (“Nightmare Alley”). But Coppola, as she did in “Marie Antoinette,” shows this luxury to be a trap, a hideaway where Priscilla is kept like a beloved pet, but then left behind when Elvis wanders elsewhere.

Coppola’s hardest limitation here is the lack of cooperation of Elvis Presley Enterprises, the corporate entity (founded by Priscilla, ironically) that controls every aspect of the rock star’s image. EPE denied the movie the use of Presley’s music — so Coppola took a different tack, employing her husband, Thomas Mars, and his band Phoenix to be music supervisors, picking period songs with great care (with the grating exception of the last song in the movie, which is chronologically off but emotionally too on-the-nose).

The most fascinating part of “Priscilla” is watching Spaeny (“Bad Times at the El Royale,” “The Craft: Legacy”) go through the phases of Priscilla’s life, from 14 to 27, so naturally and sensitively. It’s a star-making performance, and one that gives Coppola’s account its emotional weight.

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‘Priscilla’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, November 3, in theaters. Rated R for drug use and some language. Running time: 113 minutes.