Big, big sigh.Ĭoppola, the writer-director of 'The Virgin Suicides,' 'Lost in Translation' and 'Somewhere,' has always been innately attuned to the forming identities, swelling desires and intimate revelations of young women. Would she like to meet him? Um, what? After some negotiations with her parents, Priscilla is sitting there on the sofa at a small party when the King of Rock `n' Roll, himself (Jacob Elordi), strolls down the stairs. Top entertainment headlines, all in one placeĪ man approaches and asks if she likes Elvis.The swoony early scenes of Coppola's film find a solitary Priscilla sipping soda in a Navy base diner while Frankie Avalon's 'Venus' ('Venus, make her fair / A lovely girl with sunlight in her hair') plays around her, as covered by the band Phoenix. She was living in West Germany, where her Air Force officer stepfather was stationed. Priscilla was just 14 years-old - a 9th grader - when she first met him. Sofia Coppola's 'Priscilla,' starring Cailee Spaeny, captures all the dreaminess, the absurdity and, finally, the nightmare of falling in love with Elvis. Dreamily gazing at the album covers of Elvis Presley was not, statistically speaking, a rare habit among American teen girls in the late 1950s and early '60s.īut for Priscilla Beaulieu, teenage fantasy became a strange and surreal reality.
