Is Priscilla proof that Sofia Coppola's films are beautiful, but empty?

In Priscilla, Sofia Coppola portrays the life of Elvis Presley’s very young partner: their relationship began when Priscilla was 14, when he was 24. But the aesthetic obsession of this film, in which every shot seems to have been designed to provide cute screenshots, struggling to hide the abysmal emptiness of the staging. It’s difficult to settle for a parade of hairstyles, cars and glamorous outfits in the face of a story that is only a pure emanation of male control and domination. Sofia Coppola leaves out all these topics one by one and in the end doesn’t say much.

One of the most anticipated films of the year was released in theaters on Wednesday 3 January. Less than two years after the surge Elvis, Priscilla seemed to present itself as the perfect opposite of Baz Luhrmann’s film. Against the $85 million biopic about superstar, rock and glitter, Priscilla and its $20 million budget was billed as a dive into the darkness and intimacy of Elvis Presley, centering on the life of young Priscilla.

Priscilla: a woman-object under the gaze of Elvis…and Sofia Coppola’s camera

Priscilla it’s a film about a woman who waits. At 14, Priscilla is a shy teenager who only knows her school and home. It was at this age that Elvis Presley asked to spend time with her and, almost immediately, they became a couple. At her young age, the influence of the world’s biggest rock star on the teenager was obviously immediate: Priscilla became the thing of Elvis, present when she asks, absent when he dismisses her. Her daily life consists of making herself beautiful while waiting for the moment when he will take her shopping, do her hair, dress her as she wants and go around in luxury cars.

Is Priscilla proof that Sofia Coppola’s films are beautiful, but empty? — Priscilla

Burning questions arise from this simple synopsis. What does Priscilla think? ? What do you feel? ? Is it love, as she tells herself? Or is her story rather that of a person deprived of personal development because she became a housewife even before leaving childhood? And why did Elvis choose this young girl? Beyond the icon, what does this say about her about her masculinity and, more generally, about the violence of powerful men ?

Sofia Coppola does not answer all these questions. The director could very well weave her film starting from a heroine, we will never know what Priscilla thinks, wants, desires. In other words, the film may have been shot with one woman behind the camera and another in front, It doesn’t contain an ounce of it female gauze.

The screenshot obsession

Why, inside Priscillathe image feeds only on the candy a cashmere sweater, the charm of a pair of false eyelashes, the glitz of painted nails or a Ferrari bonnet. Choices in editing, camera movement, dialogue or shot scale don’t matter: what seems to matter is creating images that convey Handsome screenshotS on Pinterest.

Since, Priscilla it looks like a series of shot vintage photo. A wedding, an evening at the casino, a moment in the pool… How many moments listed without ever being said.

A cinematic object

In other words, the film’s material is strictly limited to objects. So much so that this aesthetic it contaminates everything, even the characters. In this feature film where everything is shot the same way (In general planbe able to contain a dress of the daya well-furnished living room or a car), Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi I am shot like everything elsethat is, how decorative elements among others. Modelsthey are made up, dressed and have their hair meticulously but never take shapeas if they were same objects.

Therefore, even though the film is two hours long, we can never believe it their embodiment of the characters (we don’t see Elvis Presley in front of the film but Jacob ElordI dressed up as Elvis Presley) And even less to any alchemy between them. The film presents itself as the animated catalog of a bourgeois fantasywhich derives its dramatic and emotional interest only from the hardware and the glamour.

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There is nothing glamorous about Priscilla’s story

However, if this problematicand this the story of Priscilla Presley He has nothing charm : It’s the violent story of a woman we have objectified and treated like a doll. While Sofia Coppola had a great opportunity to make this film a space of counter-power and emancipation for his heroine, her repeats his objectification again.

THE spleenthe sensuality and latent violence that characterized it Virgin suicides gave the go-ahead to a superficial, almost advertising image. Everything is done as if Priscilla were a simpleton drawing from Priscilla Presley’s autobiography – the film is the adaptation of the book Elvis and me. Only, cinema is not just a means of illustrating. Reconstructing sets and costumes is only part of all the tools he has at his disposal. YES, Priscilla transports us to sixties faster than a Lana del Rey music video, but what can I say assembly ? From the script, we would have liked her to be interested in her heroine a subject rather than an object ? Making a film means more than illustrating bring to light what happens beyond the image : the ugliness, the suffering, the ambiguity that derive from it the crush of a woman by a man corrupted by fame, of which Priscilla’s story was full.