'Priscilla' review roundup: Critics hail Sofia Coppola film as 'eerily gripping'
Helmed by the acclaimed director Sophia Coppola, 'Priscilla' stars Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elrodi in lead roles. It releases in cinemas this October.
In Short
- Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elrodi star in the movie 'Priscilla.'
- It has been helmed by Sophia Coppola.
- The film will release on October 27 in cinemas.
Sophia Coppola directorial Priscilla premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival to rave reviews. Critics have hailed the film adapted from the memoir Elvis and Me, written by Priscilla in 1985.
PRISCILLA IS WINNING RAVE REVIEWS
It currently holds an astounding rating of 95 per cent based of 22 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla's long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame."
The Guardian described it as an 'eerily gripping' movie as it wrote, "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."
AN EXHILARATING WATCH
Rogert Ebert said that the movie honours the author's perspective: "Coppola’s movie, written by the director and based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, honors the author by giving us her perspective. And while latter-day considerations of Presley’s behavior in courting, or one might say capturing, Priscilla are replete with condemnations of how creepy it was—the word “groomer” is tossed around, and in some specific ways seen here, it is absolutely apt—from the point of view of a dreamy, distracted Austin Texas girl far from home the attention of this very shy superstar is exhilarating."
Meanwhile, Variety stated in its review, "Coppola, who wrote and directed “Priscilla,” tells this story with open eyes, so that we’re caught up, for a while, in the otherworldly entrancement of what it would mean to have the biggest star on the planet choose you to be his princess."
Starring Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elrodi, Priscilla will release on October 27, 2023.