Runtime: 113 minutes

Written and directed by: Sofia Coppola

Starring: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Dominczyk, Ari Cohen

By Sarah Manvel

Once, on arrival at Heathrow some years ago, I was met by a gaggle of screaming teenage girls who demanded to know if I had seen the members of a band, the name of which I have forgotten. I had not, but there were so many over-excited young women so convinced they were there I waited around to see what would happen. What happened is the band came through, the girls surged forward, and the band members immediately selected three or four of them each to accompany them into their waiting cars. One of them passed close to me with three girls on his arm; two were gushing away as he smirked while the third merely stared at him, with a combination of awe, disbelief, and sexual anticipation on her face. 

I thought about that girl a lot at the London Film Festival while watching “Priscilla,” Sofia Coppola’s dewy biopic of the woman Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) met while she was still a teenager and later married. Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) had been an even younger teenager when they met, on an army base in West Germany, selected by an adult man to join him at a party at Elvis’s house. They chatted about music and homesickness, one meeting led to another, and another, and while Priscilla’s parents (Dagmara Dominczyk and Ari Cohen) have a pretty good idea of what she’s in for they have no idea how to stop it, or save Priscilla from herself. Their daughter has been singled out by the most famous man in the world, a man she would do anything for. How can they possibly get in the way? 

So they don’t, and what follows is the story of the pet a rock star kept at home. There are many softly lit shots – cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd clearly aiming for the feel of an old photo album – of a beautifully dressed Priscilla walking on shag carpets with perfectly painted toenails while Elvis is, well, somewhere else. At school – for she leaves her family to live with Elvis on condition she completes high school in Nashville – the other girls treat her with a mixture of jealousy and contempt. At Graceland, in Elvis’ absence, she plays with a little dog and reads fan magazines, with very little interaction with everyone else in the house. There’s lots of era-appropriate music but almost none of Elvis’s. When Elvis is at home, there’s drug use, wild parties with his entourage, shopping sprees, and absolutely no sex whatsoever until their wedding night. 

That part is somewhat difficult to believe, except for three things. One, the real Priscilla Presley was the executive producer of this film, and her memories and influence have clearly ensured this movie stays light as a bobby-soxer’s petticoat. Two, the real Lisa Marie Presley was famously born nine months to the day after their wedding. Finally, all of this sexual stewing bubbling under the surface – very, very obviously bubbling – is so obvious the occasional chat about it is nearly insulting. The whole world already knows why a bird would fly into a gilded cage. All that can be done is wait for Priscilla to mature enough to wonder if that was the right decision. 

Mr Elordi does what he can in a hamstrung depiction of gargantuan entitlement and selfishness, but it’s unclear in his mannered performance if there’s any real love for his partner there – as it’s debatable how much of there was in real life. His persona was able to do the heavy lifting for him, leaving only small clues as to what his true feelings were, such as blocking Priscilla from working, and controlling the clothes she wore. And as the unpleasantness becomes unignorably clear “Priscilla” suddenly gets very interesting, because increasingly towards the end, Ms Spaeny bears an incredible resemblance to Meghan Markle. If Ms Coppola is making a movie about the Sussexes through Priscilla’s story, then suddenly this movie switches from being yet another biopic to a hugely pointed modern political commentary. Priscilla’s isolation even in the midst of Elvis’s rowdy family suddenly has some very recent parallels, as does the focus on appearance, makeup, fashion and image. Seen along these lines, the sadness of the heroine and the sordidness of her choices are no longer easily ignorable mistakes from a past where people didn’t know any better. Instead it makes it crystal clear that when power has the wealth to purchase the one thing money can’t buy – eternal youth – youth needs unusual resources in order not to be crushed by it. Global wealth and fame from a separate career, perhaps. 

The movie ends before Priscilla’s separate career begins, which ignores the most interesting part of the real life story, but in cinematic terms it provides a very satisfying ending. Ms Spaeny – whether she’s playing two real-life characters or not – has a gift for non-verbal communication that will take her very far as an actress. The question is whether today’s young woman, like that one from the airport, will appreciate how the unspoken part of a story like this one might save themselves a lot of trouble.