Venice Film Festival 2023: Priscilla by Sofia Coppola (Competition) | Review

Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla premieres at the 80th Venice Film festival, but shows the titular character as an angelic apparition devoid of any personal agency.

As a reviewer you can usually tell you’re watching a big budget movie if you can’t see your notebook during the movie. There is a dim-lighted quality to these films and true to form, Sofia Coppola’s latest feature Priscilla is one such film. Premiering at Venice Film Festival a year after Baz Luhrman’s lukewarm take on the singing and acting legend, Coppola decides to tell a familiar story from the perspective of Elvis’ teenage bride.

You would expect that a director who created a delectable world for Marie Antoinette and added dread and wonder to the women of The Beguiled would find enough inspiration to make the subdued schoolgirl who captured Elvis’ attention interesting. However, you would be sorely disappointed to come into the movie believing so.

In Priscilla, Coppola chooses to mould her titular character into an angelic apparition devoid of any personal agency. She is introduced as a shy, soft spoken schoolgirl whose only passion is to indulge every Elvis’ whim. She is immobile literally and figuratively unless she receives a request from Elvis. But even when they are together, they don’t do anything exciting. Their conversations are irrelevant to the story and completely forgettable so their time together drags endlessly and their time apart even more so.

Sure we see them at the fair crashing electric cars with their friends or doing target practice for no apparent reason. There is also a baffling shopping scene in which Priscilla is paraded in a line of dresses in front of Elvis and his male gang apparently only to show Elvis’ controlling side.

The only real transformation that occurs in the film is Elvis’ and even that in costume and makeup predominantly. The only glimpse of personality entrusted to Priscilla is a short scene in which she learns karate. Overall, there is no real sense of anyone evolving and that spills over to the pace.

Even Coppola’s usual aesthetic is subdued. There are a few colourful closeups but they are reserved for drugs and Priscilla’s hair transformation. Otherwise the film is flat and beige which suits the equally dull story that drags ad infinitum.

It would be unfair not to mention that Priscilla did receive more than a few heartfelt laughs from the audience, especially in the scene where Elvis charms Priscilla’s nun teachers at her graduation ceremony. But any humour or charm was lost on this reviewer. The most impressive moment of Priscilla was her feet touching the A24 carpet as seen in the teaser trailer. And that makes it a truly disappointing watch.