Sofia Coppola’s frustrating Priscilla fails its real-life subject | Adrian Horton

In her film on the schoolgirl turned wife of Elvis Presley, the director keeps her heroine at a maddening remove

Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s new film on the former wife of Elvis Presley, introduces its heroine as she is for most of the movie: surrounded by people yet psychologically alone, her interiority – thoughts, warmth, motivations, contradictions – kept at a remove. She is 14 years old, and sitting at a cafe at an army base in West Germany with her schoolwork, without friends and seemingly without much guile.

Coppola’s pacing is brisk; her Priscilla, played mesmerizingly by Cailee Spaeny, is summarily whisked into a teenage fan-girl fantasy that seems too good to be true and will provoke many viewers to check the Wikipedia to confirm the extraordinary facts. One of Elvis’s friends invites her to a party at his place; the 24-year-old matinee music idol eyes her, dolled up in the finery of a high school freshman; he asks for time with her alone.

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