Child bride, infant sacrifice, bobbysoxer concubine: Priscilla Presley, wife of Elvis, is all these in Sofia Coppola’s eerily gripping, queasily claustrophobic portrait of marital loneliness, trapped behind the kitschy prison gates of Graceland while the King is away on tour, or shooting movies with glamorous worldly female co-stars and a creepily subservient male entourage. Priscilla becomes Memphis’s very own Lady Diana, with Ann-Margret or Nancy Sinatra in the Camilla Parker-Bowles role.
The film is based on Elvis and Me, Priscilla’s 1985 memoir of the marriage, and demonstrates Coppola’s characteristically sisterly and non-judgmental intimacy with her heroine. The details, the atmosphere of Priscilla’s bizarre married life, its stretches of boredom and silence; all seem very real. As an insider account, this is a welcome corrective to Baz Luhrmann’s outsider fantasy Elvis and it redoubles what I think of as Coppola’s reputation as the Betty Friedan of 21st-century cinema, presenting us with her distinctive take on feminine mystique.
