Kritiken

The creepiness [of Priscilla] rests in the innocence, something of a Coppola speciality since The Virgin Suicides... [The director] seems intent on making a mood board as much as a movie — a teenage dream fairytale, blown up big like a Roy Lichtenstein painting, with hearts and exclamation points in the margin.

Coppola isn’t crass enough to make this a good versus evil tale. The complexities around the relationship are allowed to breathe. And they are presented in a way that, while concerning, are understandable... [Priscilla is] played superbly by Spaeny, who is utterly believable as a child and then the more mature, harder [woman]... a near-perfect performance.

If Coppola specialises in gilded cages, Priscilla knows precisely how to tell that story... [The film] transcends its frivolous trappings and elevates itself to greatness.

It’s Spaeny’s movie through and through and her growth from an innocent teen... to a young woman who is so much more than a beehive and doe eyes is a very fine performance... There’s more than a touch of southern gothic to Priscilla and it shares the same limpid and languid qualities of Coppola’s previous movies.

[Coppola] is not always given credit for just how complex and layered her films can be. [In Priscilla,] she skillfully pulls off the tricky manoeuvre of positioning the story through a dual perspective... [The director] is way too classy to stoop to finger-pointing and sensationalism.

A quietly lethal two-hour takedown of the King of Rock'n'Roll... Because this is a Sofia Coppola film and imbued with her ambient signature style (see also Somewhere and Marie Antoinette), none of the material is presented as high histrionics.

Our heroine brings out the best in the director... Her signature movie, Lost in Translation, was another tale of an uncertain wife in a gilded cage. Two decades on, Priscilla has a sharper edge, but Coppola still prefers suggestion to editorial. Much is hidden in plain sight.

The real beauty of Priscilla is its delicate portrayal of the all-consuming fire and flood of first love, and what happens when you grow up, and begin to realise the fairytale doesn’t always have a happy ending. And that’s okay, too.

Those expecting a racy, scandal-fuelled biopic may feel shortchanged. As a portrait of a young woman’s journey through a tragic marriage and out the other side, however, Priscilla soars... [The film] is textbook Sofia Coppola: not breaking the mould, but a sublime continuation of her sad-girl sensibilities.

[Priscilla] is a poignant look at a lonely life, and I found it more disturbing--or at least unsettling--than romantic. Spaeny plays Priscilla as convincingly childlike... Meanwhile, Elordi plays Elvis as quixotic and complicated. Coppola doesn't paint him as a villain, or indeed Priscilla as a victim... But she does present a picture of a challenging marriage to an often-selfish man.

Sitting in near-perfect contrast to the image of Elvis Presley that’s been cultivated in modern Americana, Priscilla is an elegant, introspective, achingly lovely portrait of a pop culture icon. Unafraid of shattering rose-tinted glasses, Coppola’s film is fierce in its subtlety, relying on Spaeney’s breathtaking performance... to deliver a film that’s equal parts beautiful and heartbreaking.

With exquisite patience, pointillist detail and a sadness so soft and luxuriant you can practically drape it around yourself like a mantle, “Priscilla”... [doesn't] take the easy route of mistaking a young woman’s naiveté for passivity or victimhood, qualities that could scarcely be more absent from Spaeny’s intensely watchful performance... [It is Coppola's] strongest in more than a decade.