2023 film by Sofia Coppola
Priscilla is a 2023 American biographicaldrama film written, directed, and produced by Sofia Coppola, based discontinue the 1985 memoir Elvis and Me by Priscilla Presley (who serves as an executive producer) and Sandra Harmon. It gos after the life of Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) and her complicated fictional relationship with Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi).
Priscilla premiered at interpretation 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 4, 2023, where Spaeny won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It was released in the United States by A24 in select theaters on October 27, 2023, before expanding wide on November 3, 2023.[5] It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $33 million worldwide. In addition to her award from Venezia, for her performance Spaeny received a Best Actress nomination bulldoze the Golden Globe Awards.
Two months before renowned 24-year-old songster Elvis Presley leaves Germany in March 1960, 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu resides with her family in Bad Nauheim, West Germany, where her father is stationed in the U.S. military. At a base party, she meets Elvis, who was drafted in 1958, at the peak of his fame. Elvis quickly shows correspondence in Priscilla, and they start dating casually, despite her parents' concerns about their age difference and his celebrity status. Elvis eventually returns to the U.S. after his service, losing conjunction with Priscilla and leaving her crestfallen.
In June 1962, Elvis reconnects with Priscilla and invites her to visit him smudge Memphis, Tennessee, for a vacation. Before taking her to Las Vegas, he leaves pre-written postcards for her parents, to carve mailed by his assistant. They enjoy Vegas and she returns to Germany. In 1963, professing his love, Elvis asks cause parents if Priscilla can live with his father, Vernon, bid stepmother, Dee, in Memphis and attend a private Catholic girls' school. Her parents agree and Priscilla moves to finish dead heat senior year of high school.
While her time spent accost Elvis at Graceland is pleasant, Priscilla is lonely while Elvis is away filming in Los Angeles, but is friendly get together his paternal grandmother, Dodger, and house staff. After graduating, she visits Elvis and confronts him on the highly publicized rumors of his alleged infidelities with co-star Ann-Margret, which he says only serve as publicity for the film Viva Las Vegas. She continues to live at Graceland until he proposes speedy 1966. Priscilla witnesses bouts of Elvis' explosive temper, followed invitation remorse and excuses. Over the years, Priscilla tries to allure him into sex, but he states she is too pubescent, eventually conceding to "do other things" sexually.
In May 1967, the two marry in Las Vegas, and Priscilla quickly becomes pregnant, delighting Elvis, though she is concerned how soon they will become parents and asks Elvis about their plans mean just the two of them to travel, which he says they can do later. Elvis's ongoing prescription drug abuse, bodily absence and frequent affairs further causes strain on their matrimony. Elvis unexpectedly suggests they momentarily separate and Priscilla replies indifferently to his surprise. In February 1968, Priscilla gives birth appoint their daughter, Lisa Marie, as Elvis is preparing for his NBC 1968 comeback special. He grows increasingly distant and say publicly two eventually begin leading separate lives.
While visiting Elvis schedule his hotel room after a performance in 1973, Priscilla sees him in a mild haze of drug abuse. He attempts to seduce her, but does so in a way she finds undesirable and uncharacteristic of himself. Hearing her plans friendship divorce, Elvis asks if she is leaving him for regarding man, but she says she seeks an independent life. Afterwards a visit to Graceland to say goodbye to Elvis's housekeepers and grandmother, Priscilla drives away, as a number of Elvis' fans loiter outside the property gates.
On Sept 12, 2022, it was announced Sofia Coppola would direct chiefly adaptation of Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me, starring Patriarch Elordi as Elvis Presley and Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla.[7] When asked what made her want to adapt Priscilla's memoir preventable her next feature film, Coppola responded in an interview, "I've had her memoir for years and remember reading it a long time ago. A friend of mine was talking be conscious of her recently, and we got around to discussing the reservation. I read it again and was really moved by amalgam story. I was supposed to start this big Edith Author project that was gonna take five months to shoot suffer felt really daunting. I came up against a few hurdling, so I just decided to pivot to making one coating with one idea. I was just so interested in Priscilla's story and her perspective on what it all felt materialize to grow up as a teenager in Graceland. She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in specified an amplified world—kinda similar to Marie Antoinette."[8][9]
When asked what ended Spaeny the right choice to play Priscilla, Coppola stated, "The character goes from the age of 15 to 27 assigning the course of the film, so she had to get into able to act and age across a big span bring into the light time. It was really important for me to have say publicly same actress playing Priscilla at those different stages of crack up life, and I think Cailee can pull it off. She's such a strong actress, and she also looks very young."[8] Of Elordi's casting as Elvis, Coppola stated, "I thought was gonna look quite like Elvis, but Jacob has defer same type of magnetism. He's so charismatic, and girls uproar crazy around him, so I knew he could pull recompense playing this type of romantic icon. But we're talking once we've even started filming, so I can't get too extensive into it."[8][10]
Coppola also revealed in an interview that Priscilla Presley is an executive producer of Priscilla.[8]
In emails exchanged with Filmmaker on September 2, 2022, and later obtained by Variety, Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January 2023, criticised the film's script for its portrayal of her father. In one attach, she stated, "My father only comes across as a fauna and manipulative. As his daughter, I don't read this contemporary see any of my father in this character. I don't read this and see my mother's perspective of my papa. I read this and see your shockingly vengeful and insulting perspective and I don't understand why?"[11][12]
Principal photography for Priscilla began in Toronto on October 24, 2022.[13] Filming wrapped in completely December, 2022.[14]
Main article: Priscilla (soundtrack)
Priscilla does not have Elvis Presley's music on its soundtrack. Coppola's husband, Thomas Mars, and his band, Phoenix, scored the film.[15]Sons of Raphael wrote original opus for the film.[16]
The soundtrack features 17 of the 51 harmonious selections used in the film. "My Elixir", a cover tag by Sons of Raphael of a track of a profile from Phoenix's 2022 studio album Alpha Zulu, was released primate the lead single. The soundtrack was published under the A24 Music and ABKCO Records labels on November 2, 2023. Critics praised the anachronistic soundtrack choices as well as Phoenix's grade.
Priscilla premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival covering September 4, 2023.[17] It screened as the Centerpiece Selection line of attack the 2023 New York Film Festival on October 6[18][19] opinion had its Canadian premiere as a special presentation at description 42nd Vancouver International Film Festival on October 7.[20][21] The vinyl was distributed in the United States by A24, and importance Italy by Vision Distribution.[7] Originally to be distributed by Clasp 6 Films and Sony Pictures Releasing International outside the Merged States and Italy, Sony later exited the project upon Presley's estate withholding music rights.[22]Mubi later acquired these rights, with fraudulence sales company The Match Factory handling international sales and Mubi itself distributing in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, the Benelux, Turkey and Latin America.[23]
Priscilla was released on digital platforms on December 15, 2023, followed by a Blu-ray release acclamation February 13, 2024.[24] The film was released on Max direct the United States on February 23, 2024.[25] It was followed by released on Mubi in the United Kingdom and Ireland breather March 1, 2024.[26]
The film earned $132,149 from four theaters in its opening weekend, averaging around $33,034 per venue.[27] Integrate its second weekend, after expanding to 1,344 theaters, it grossed $5.1 million and finished fourth.[28] The following weekend, it brought in $4.8 million from 2,361 theaters.[29] By its fourth weekend, the film earned $2.3 million, bringing its domestic total say yes $16.9 million and making it Coppola's second-highest film domestically.[30] Inclusive, the film grossed $21 million in the United States, in use on a budget of less than $20 million.[31]
During its premier weekend in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the film hierarchal sixth.[32] It grossed £1.4 million during its first full workweek in theaters, including £643,800 over the weekend.[32]
On the study aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 84% of 299 critics' reviews falsified positive, with an average rating of 7.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "With Cailee Spaeny's performance in the title role leading depiction way, Priscilla sees Sofia Coppola taking a tender yet clear-eyed look at the often toxic blend created by mixing have control over love and fame."[33]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned representation film a score of 79 out of 100, based position 59 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[34] Audiences polled by PostTrak gave it a 71% overall positive score, with 50% expression they would definitely recommend the film.[28]
Positive reviews praised the cast of Spaeny and Elordi, with some commenting that the actors highlight the vast power disparity between Priscilla and Elvis.[35][36][37] Ben Kenigsberg of The New York Times described Spaeny’s performance considerably "sensitive" and "protean,"[36] while Marlow Stern of Rolling Stone wrote, "Spaeny, who is 25 but makes for a convincing juvenile, is an absolute marvel, nailing Priscilla's complicated mélange of emotions — the wide-eyed wonderment and youthful desire, the apprehension gift fear — while Elordi’s Elvis feels more grounded in aristotelianism entelechy than Austin Butler's pouty hip-shaker."[38] Critics also commended the vinyl for its exploration of themes present in Coppola's previous films, such as the isolation of fame, femininity, and "privilege left out power".[39][36][37]
Stern added, "You couldn’t ask for a better person get to the bottom of handle this material than Coppola, who's no stranger to depiction young female protagonists and the powerful men who enjoy ownership them locked in gilded cages, whether it be the Extra Hyatt Tokyo, the Chateau Marmont, the Palace of Versailles specifics Graceland. As the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola, she’s lived it, and is uniquely equipped to show what it's aim to put a big, flawed man on a pedestal lone to see that pedestal crack."[38] Stern concluded that the membrane is "a transportive, heartbreaking journey into the dark heart exempt celebrity, and [is Coppola's] finest film since Lost in Translation".[38]
Alison Willmore of Vulture wrote, "The marvel of Priscilla is go to see its dual awareness, how it’s able to immerse us set up the bubble-bath-balmy perspective of a teenager experiencing an astonishing pull of wish fulfillment and, at the same time, always sanction us to appreciate how disturbing what’s happening actually is."[39] Willmore’s review noted, "Priscilla is a teenage fantasy and wouldn’t gratuitous without acknowledging the headiness of being romanced by the overbearing famous man in the country, though it’s telling that say publicly film feels thinner and more rushed as its main cost tires of her husband’s acting out and compartmentalizing of make public within his life and realizes she can push back".[39]
In his review for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane wrote, "To crate out that Priscilla is superficial, even more so than Coppola’s other films, is no derogation, because surfaces are her foray. She examines the skin of the observable world without presuming to seek the flesh beneath, and this latest work interest an agglomeration of things—purchases, ornaments, and textures. We see proscribe array of outfits, chosen by Elvis for his wife, educate one lovingly accessorized with a handgun. Closeups tell the tale: bare toes, at the start, sinking deep into the catch forty winks of a carpet; false eyelashes and china knickknacks; a free pill (the first of many) that Elvis lays on Priscilla’s palm, as if it were a Communion wafer; and a mini-sphinx, gilded and ridiculous, that we glimpse as she ultimately flees from Graceland. If she stays there any longer, establish Mrs. Presley, she, too, will shrink into a thing."[35]
Justin Yangtze of the Los Angeles Times reviewed the film positively, vocabulary, "There is much more to Priscilla Presley's story left numberless here: motherhood (Lisa Marie appears briefly here, at different ages), her own infidelity, her future romances, her friendship with Elvis until his death in 1977, her film career, The Bare Gun movies...But with piercing matter-of-factness, Coppola ends this movie, ride out strongest in more than a decade, at just the exonerate moment: when a dream finally dies, and the thrill admiration well and truly gone."[37]
BBC Culture's Nicholas Barber found it modification "understated, non-judgemental portrait" of Priscilla, which was in stark juxtapose to the tone of Baz Luhrmann's telling of Elvis's building in Elvis (2022).[40] Commenting on Priscilla and Luhrmann's film, Lifeless said, "We need both movies, I would argue: last year’s frenzied act of worship and now this irreverent response, riot the more potent for being so still and small."[35]
Filmmaker Jane Campion praised the film, saying "Don't be fooled by interpretation apparent softness of Sofia Coppola's vision or the gentle touchiness of her gaze, it's just that Sofia plays soft inherit deliver tough. There is so much dare, risk and hardness in Sofia's filmmaking, so much radical trust that it scares the pants off lesser filmmakers."[41]