It's difficult not to view Sofia Coppola's "Priscilla" as a response to Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis," in which Elvis Presley's wife barely appeared and was a totally inconsequential character. "Priscilla" gives Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) a full narrative centered on her relationship and marriage to Elvis, and it's as compelling as any Elvis story I've ever seen. Where Luhrmann's film was full of spectacle and recreations of Elvis's famous performances, Coppola's is far more intimate, limited to the subjective view of Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny), who was always waiting in the wings.
There's a very Southern Gothic vibe to the narrative, based on Priscilla Presley's memoirs. She met Elvis (Jacob Elordi) when she was a sheltered fourteen year-old and he was already a famous singer ten years her senior. The early parts of the film have a certain giddy romantic air, as Priscilla and Elvis carry on their romance through sporadic meetings and trips, and gradually shift Priscilla out of the care and supervision of her parents (Dagmara Domińczyk, Ari Cohen), and into Elvis's orbit full time. Unfortunately, Graceland doesn't give Priscilla the freedom she expects, and marriage doesn't improve their relationship.
This is one of my favorite Coppola films in some time, because of the way that it plays with the familiar Elvis Presley mythos. There's so much attention paid to clothes and makeup and the little details of domestic life that are usually the window dressing of other biopics. Here, they're used as major parts of the film's storytelling. From Priscilla's POV, Graceland is suffocating despite the luxury, Colonel Parker is only a voice on the other end of the phone, and Elvis in private is very different from his public persona. Jacob Elordi gives us an Elvis who is both tragic and the kind of nightmare domestic partner every girl is warned about. However, he's also recognizably Elvis Presley, who no one can say no to. Cailee Spaeny makes an excellent Priscilla, in part because she's able to look so young in those early scenes. It gets across how unbalanced and how unhealthy the relationship is from the very beginning, and makes Priscilla's eventual empowerment very satisfying.
I feel obligated to write something about "Past Lives," which is never a good mindset when reviewing anything. However, "Past Lives" is a major awards contender and has a lot of buzz around it. Like "Aftersun" last year, it's a very personal, intimate story about a relationship. And like "Aftersun," I didn't get anything out of it at all. Greta Lee stars as Nora Moon, a Korean immigrant who reconnects with her childhood friend Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) as an adult. The two were on the path to romance until Nora left South Korea with her family to immigrate to the United States. The movie follows them as twelve year-olds, twenty-four year-olds, and finally at thirty-six.
The performances are good, but the tone of the film is very casual and very sedate. Initially the stakes don't seem too high, as Nora and Hae Sung are always tentatively circling around romance, and never fully committed to each other. However, the film suggests that the two would have fallen in love in other circumstances, with much discussion of the Korean concept of "inyun" - the amount of which will affect fated connections. In this life the two don't have enough inyun - they're separated by distance, by their personal ambitions, by lifestyle choices, and by Nora also falling in love with Arthur (John Magaro), who is consistently not jealous of the man his wife is possibly also in love with.
In theory, I like the idea of a film with very little conflict, focused on navigating adult feelings and relationships in very intelligent terms. In reality, "Past Lives" left me cold. I like the actors and their choices fine. The filmmaking is lovely and intimate, and has a wonderful sense of patience. However, the story was just so slight, and the characters so quiet that it was difficult to care about them. I don't think this has anything to do with the characters having Korean origins or the language barrier. I guess the film just didn't ever convince me that Nora and Hae Sung's potential relationship was ever worth so much consideration.
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