on priscilla (TIMELY)

I’m on vacation with a busted toe and a newly established Letterboxd, so I had a moment to recall Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, which I saw in November and on which my thoughts have not budged since. Here, edited for classiness and reposted, is my review.

So Priscilla: I love it. I would love it if it were solely the cut from their first kiss to her flooooooating down the hallway, which was so instinctually muscle-memory relatable that my nervous system laughed at me and I choked on my drink in the theater.

And that excellent cut is a microcosm of why you watch Priscilla: it deftly handles, with unusual realism, the fact of her being groomed and trapped AND ALSO falling for someone. TLDR of Priscilla’s first act: let's be fucking serious, you're sixteen and down and the rockstar wants to fuck? YOU FUCK THE ROCKSTAR. You're going to fuck the rockstar.

It's kind of the fucking Zizek (I'm SO sorry I'm so sorry really I am, it’s from the latest Contra video) quote "we have a perfect word for fantasy realized: nightmare." What distinguishes Priscilla is that it holds one reality in each hand at all times; more specifically, it doesn’t discredit or shy away from the fantasy. And thus much better reflects life. Many first loves are both fantasy and nightmare, fantasy that realizes into nightmare, fantasy one hour and nightmare the next. The Troubles come from the fact that neither fully cancels out the other, until it feels entirely impossible to know whether you’re in a nightmare with perks or a dream with nuance. (Which could be the working title for Priscilla’s second act in Graceland)

Overly simple and didactic representations of unhealthy relationships that cheapen the romance of them, painting them for pedagogy’s sake as Bad Danger All Unpleasant Teens Watch Out Quicksand In The Halloween Candy miss the fucking point, alienate the very people they’re trying to speak to, and are above all a lazy, unrealistic, and wasteful representation of the dysfunctional relationship all of us have had, or could.

Priscilla gingerly balances both fantasy and nightmare on its fingertips by presenting the POV: You Are Priscilla Presley Immersive VR Experience. In the first act we feel the relationship as Dream-Come-True, and even still in fits in the second act as the walls curdle in on Priscilla. The way he looks at us/her; the way it confirms some on-high specialness about us/her that The King is so under our/her sway; the dreamy wooziness of staring out the classroom window thinking about him. (Mitchell from summer camp you can still call me) In our 21st century contextpilled brains we know he’s an adult with the power of a small nation’s Prime Minister inexplicably pursuing a child; as has been discussed this is brilliantly highlighted by Elordi’s gargantuan physicality next to Spaeny’s gamine. But first-act Priscilla is of two minds about this too: his giantness makes it all the more charming that he’s so very gentle with her. The tiger very sweetly made a pet by sudden onset adoration.

Even further; the real woman loved him, and subsequently renders an honest-to-god connection between two sensitive souls. My brilliant friend Zoe felt the film didn’t convincingly show a connection between them, and I think that’s fair. Their chemistry isn’t built on scintillating conversations, but rather, to quote the holy text, an energy exchange. And subsequently you may find it unconvincing. But I have seen two Scorpios in love, so I am seeing the vision. All this is to say, the film’s Priscilla isn’t walking into a bear trap, she’s falling for him, and if we relax into the current of the film, we are too. In this place we come to for magic, I’m doing everything Priscilla does (#Imwithher) and babey, I’m fucking the fucking rockstar. (#Imfuckingtherockstarwithher)

As the movie rolls on, Priscilla's nightmare and our 21st century fondest hope are one: her total exit from his orbit. The point is to be intoxicated and wounded by him as she is, and for my money, we are. Priscilla accomplishes that. There. That’s my review thesis. Boom. I’ll put it in a pull quote so we all really remember it.

The point is to be intoxicated and wounded by him as she is, and for my money, we are. Priscilla accomplishes that. Boom.

I agree with criticisms that the set and costume design lacks teeth, gumption, moxie, et cetera. LET’S GET TACKY!

But I counter ideological quibbles with narrative frame. "Why don't we actually watch her become a fully realized independent woman?" the distant cries of thousands of video essayists echo forth, having reached my enclosure six months after their timely utterance. "Because it's not fucking about that," I respond. It's about a relationship, with a girlhood inside of it, and it ends when Priscilla decides she is through with girlhood and graduating into the next thing: a mild to medium marijuana dependen- no, I mean, womanhood. Priscilla is ultimately about a relationship as a birth canal into adulthood, and this is a movie about labor, not taking the resultant kid to kindergarten.

Priscilla is ultimately about a relationship as a birth canal into adulthood, and this is a movie about labor, not taking the resultant kid to kindergarten.

Priscilla had a dope, star studded, and very movie-worthy life after Elvis, but stories insisting a wounded historical woman Come Into Her Power are starting to piss me the fuck off. I'm exhausted with "feminist" historical revisionism. "What if the wives of Henry the Eighth unionized?" They didn't. "What if Juliet lived, actually?" Boring. Why are we trying to retcon away the historical fact of patriarchy? Of pain? Rather than using feminist-marked capital to try to wring empowerment out of women canonically fucked over, or fictional women, why don't we use that capital to prevent fucking over women right now, specifically by platforming historically underrepresented, fucking nuanced and relevant and quality women's perspectives?* Also, depicting pain is not disempowerment, it’s honesty; it’s a primary way we identify and rectify the ills of this life and world; and it’s certainly more productive than What If Joan of Arc Was Bisexual and Actually Never Died and In Fact is Running for House in Arizona’s Ninth District Right Now.

*So, ~girlhood~ obsessives. I don’t really get what you’re on about because the predominant emotion of my girlhood was impatience that my mom was fucking STILL talking to an acquaintance in this TJ Maxx, but since you’re so enamored of the concept: I’m curious about, I don’t know, Black suburban girlhood. Mid-transition trans girlhood. The unique girlhood of a first sapphic relationship. #girlhood social media aesthetics taste, to me, like the latest spin cycle of presenting cis white women with their gender as something to navelgaze about and feel very fragile in. But I haven’t read the Eliza McLamb essay yet. So, first, tell me if I’m wrong and being an asshole. And second, while I obsessively curate my own gender, I’d beg a distinction between gender performance itself and the contemporary and ideologically-stuffed-crust ~girlhood~ ~coquette~ ~I’m just a girl~ craze of the moment.

One last thing on that — film video essayist Broey Deschanel (whom I disagree with above about Priscilla's effectiveness and narrative frame) oft convincingly makes the point that Coppola and Gerwig best achieve the universal when they go specific and honest. I don’t think Priscilla shouldn’t have been made because it’s in that privileged passivity/captivity girlhood oeuvre I was maligning in italics right up there. No, not many of us are in the gilded cage Priscilla was, but by tapping thoughtfully, observantly, vividly, into the rich emotional experience and pain of that cage — ie, that of the porousness of the border between romance and abuse — Coppola pulls from and contributes to the collective unconscious of experience in romantic relationship. In so doing she offers far more and more universal understanding than she would empowerment via And-Juliet-ing Priscilla. But even that is so besides the fucking point! Because the point is not to guidance counsel women. The point is to evocatively and artfully immerse viewers in a girl's infatuation, love, and pain.

The Obvious Question of whether Coppola should expand her work beyond its precedented lily whiteness and wealth is a question I don’t know the answer to. Considering Scorsese’s deeply-considered Killers of the Flower Moon effort, maybe yes? Certainly white creators shouldn’t be fucking pussies about engaging with race because they’re scawwed somebody will cowwect them. But then, considering what I literally just said, maybe the best way Coppola can speak to girls of all kinds is by expertly depicting the flavors of experience she can fully understand, and boosting work covering the kinds she can’t. Should white writers be trying to get inside the minds of characters of color? Could my straight roommate play Maureen in RENT? What I told her is “I’m not saying no, I’m saying it would be lame.” My approach as a viewer is to do both: watch Priscilla, *and* Cuties. I loved seeing Coppola do her thing here, and I’m seeking recs for different kinds of girlhood stories. BREAKING: LOCAL BISEXUAL SPLITS THE DIFFERENCE. MORE AT ELEVEN.

Ultimately though, Coppola’s fine-point work in Priscilla is what I — speaking for all women because I feel like it — want from you, filmmakers: to render your subjects as attentively and honestly as possible with dope lighting (and, credit where credit is due, an “Unwritten” needle drop if it’s not too much trouble) for women everywhere to connect with or learn about each other from; and while all women are listening to you, for you to tell them my number.

Thanks for reading!! LMK what you thought about Priscilla and please god put me on comings-of-age unlike it. Oh, and I changed the blog name. I’m a girl with problems, which are mostly girls. Feels elegant. Lastly, my playlists are better than my writing (not self effacing — I am very good at making playlists). Here’s the one I made from inside the emotional world of Priscilla: