Few tales can comfortably withstand such disparate takes as the tumultuous love story between Elvis and Priscilla Presley. At one end of the spectrum, we have Baz Luhrmann’s delirious biopic Elvis – a frenetic blur where music and fame collide. At the other end, standing with delicate poise, is Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, a slow-burning portrait of the duo’s flawed union. Coppola opens with a 14-year-old Priscilla falling under the spell of a musical deity through a chance encounter. But instead of a relationship that blossoms into love, Coppola shows a series of stark snapshots, each infused with a potent cocktail of drugs, eroticism, and abuse. As an expert of dreamy introspection, especially when showing women in waiting, Coppola depicts an uncertain girl, plucked from the vine by famous hands before she was ripe – left to languish in the harsh glare of the public eye and suffocate in solitude within Graceland. But instead of rotting away, Priscilla endures a slow, painful maturation that unfolds in isolation as she continues to yearn for a broken man, whose true self is masked by fame, rendering him blind to the needs of others. (2023) — Ryan Brothers
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