Priscilla’s story is something like an idyllic schoolgirl fantasy that slowly crashes to earth. It begins as wish-fulfillment, our teenage lead finding herself rubbing shoulders, and soon growing close, with her favorite musician, but soon sours as Elvis is gradually humanized. We watch him transform, through Priscilla’s eyes, from a superhuman rockstar whose mere presence is surreal, to a complex, real character; just as to this young girl idolizing him, his image slowly seeps away and he is revealed to be not larger than life, not an icon, not funk personified, but just some random asshole who got lucky and wants to take his success for all it’s worth. Still, though it presents him as the painfully average bizarro he was, I don’t think the big accusation of this film is against the individual Elvis Presley in particular – people arguing over whether it appropriately depicts or alludes to his abuse of women and girls in real life miss the larger point of the picture (it’s called Priscilla, for goodness sake!). Priscilla is groomed notably not into sex (Coppola’s Elvis suffers from that painfully average Madonna-whore complex), but rather into trophyhood, dollhood, pethood. If Coppola achieves anything, it is to impart onto the audience the devastation of having a future life stripped away at the hands of a controlling partner, of having one’s identity consumed. Unfortunately, we are never privy to Priscilla’s pre-Elvis identity, the film instead defining her through her attempts at domestic fulfillment in a series of interactions with Elvis – perhaps it is no wonder the critical reception has been so focused on his story rather than hers, given that the movie seems to split its attention. I wondered at points if Coppola’s Elvis was too developed, too human, when he should have been more of a looming specter, the isolating boyfriend that is traditional femininity. In a late scene, one of her few without Elvis, Priscilla applies her makeup before leaving for the hospital, unprompted, and we understand she has been successfully trained. She can only be seen in public just so. Just as Elvis’ shortcomings and manipulations mirror those of the everyman, Priscilla’s plight mirrors that of the everywoman, though she is able to disrobe in a mansion: her gilded cage is her own image, as a rockstar’s beautiful wife.
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