‘Priscilla’ Trailer Explores Troubled Romance of Priscilla and Elvis Presley
The new trailer for Sofia Coppola's Priscilla explores the troubled romance and marriage of Priscilla and Elvis Presley. Priscilla stars Cailee Spaeny in the titular role and Jacob Elordi as the King.
Based on Priscilla Presley's 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, the movie Priscilla includes personal accounts of her relationship with Elvis. Variety reports about the trailer, “Flashes of their first meeting in Bad Nauheim, Germany, in 1959 to their 1967 Las Vegas wedding and birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie, are teased throughout the new footage. The trailer spotlights some of the couple’s most iconic moments together, as well as their eventual divorce.”
Priscilla Gives an Inside Perspective on Priscilla and Elvis Presley's Relationship
The official Priscilla production notes describe Coppola's film as follows:
“By the age of 21, she was one of the most famous women in the world, the symbolic queen of American rock and roll. Yet Priscilla Presley, the long-time love and only wife of Elvis, was barely known at all. Her narrative has long been eclipsed by the overwhelming heat and flash of his, but within its contours lies an alternate and private history, though one mirroring the culture—a girl’s story of yearning, growing up inside a lushly fabricated fairy tale, and ultimately awakening to very real personal desires and the layers and complexities of power.
“Sofia Coppola presents a view of Priscilla’s time with Elvis from the mysterious interior. The tale unfolds like an intimate memory from a childlike, dreamy, but eventually widening point of view, as Priscilla lives out an alternately tantalizing, suffocating, and transforming fantasy, and experiences a singularly American coming-of-age. Her story spans from age 14—when she first meets Elvis as a bored, lonely Air Force brat living in Germany—to 24, when she departs the candy-colored dreamland of Graceland as a young mother hungry to explore her own unwritten future. In the decade between, Coppola handcrafts an immersive, deliciously glamorous existence, but also a delicate, close-up vision of a young woman clamoring to define herself in a world where she’s constantly defined by others.”
Coppola says in the official production notes:
“Reading Priscilla’s story for the first time, I was struck by how relatable her story was even in such an unusual setting, and how we saw her as such a striking figure next to Elvis, but she wasn’t looked at beyond that. Priscilla was mainly seen in the world of entertainment tabloids as ‘Elvis’ child bride’ but I felt there was a much more interesting story to tell—about a girlish wish that came true but wasn’t what she imagined, about coming-of-age inside both incredible fame and great loneliness, about how people learn to live inside of bubbles and also feel the need to burst them, about the strength it took to for her to realize that as much as she loved Elvis, she had to go. Elvis was such a vital part of American cultural history, but Priscilla’s life is equally part of that history.”
Priscilla opens in theaters nationwide on November 3.
Robert DeSalvo is a professional writer and editor with over 25 years of experience at print and online publications such as Movieline, Playboy, PCH, Fandango, and The A.V. Club. He currently lives in Los Angeles, the setting of his favorite movie, Blade Runner. Robert has interviewed dozens of actors, directors, authors, musicians, and other celebrities during his journalism career, including Brian De Palma, Nicolas Cage, Dustin Hoffman, John Waters, Sigourney Weaver, Julianne Moore, Bryan Cranston, Anne Rice, and many more. Horror movies, sci-fi, cult films as well as gothic, postpunk, and synthwave music are what Robert geeks over.
