There is a moment in EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert when a teenager in the front row clamps her lips onto Elvis like a limpet, before she is swiftly dislodged by her mother. Elvis, unruffled, moves on to the next one. At another point, a bra is flung in his direction; he instinctively turns it into a bonnet. Just as The Beatles incited mass hysteria, so too did the King – despite never performing outside of North America.
Clearly, Baz Luhrmann is one of his devotees. Returning to the subject four years after his feverish, Oscar-nominated biopic Elvis was released in a blizzard of sequins and rhinestone-encrusted bombast, the Australian director fashions a film that is exhilarating, immersive and so immediate that the 5,000 miles (and 50 years) between the singer’s Las Vegas stage and a cinema seat in Britain cease to exist. That Luhrmann trades in razzle-dazzle certainly helps: he capitalises on his subject’s fondness for garish sunglasses, giant sideburns, and an arsenal of jumpsuits filigreed with gems and boasting outlandish collars. The two men’s shared appetite for gilded excess and perpetual motion makes this tribute, even more than the biopic, seem like a kinship of strutting peacocks.
