Sofia Coppola directs the story of Priscilla Presley from the age of 14 to 26. The film is based on Priscilla’s book: ‘Elvis and Me’, so the source material is, at least, seemingly authentic and shows a previously unseen side to this part of the story.
I never saw Baz Luhmann’s recent Elvis and if you gave me the choice I’m always betting on Sofia Coppolla over Baz. Elvis gets the money and the glitz and Priscilla gets the unflashy treatment and consequently is probably more real.
Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla
What did I think? What did I feel?
At first I thought and felt, she is very young, how can this be ok? but as the film progressed you get to see her journey and experience through young Priscilla’s eyes. Coppola gives us a version of events that show Priscilla falling in love and feeling like the centre of attention all the way to being sidelined in the circus that was the life of Elvis and all that came with it.
Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi in Priscilla
Cailee Spaeny is fantastic as Priscilla. I believe her. She is, for the most part, fully connected to the role.
I first saw her in the Alex Garland’s excellent Devs and then in Mare of Easttown and she is going to be featured in Alex Garland’s new film Civil War later in the year, which looks VERY interesting. She was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for this performance and definitely deserves the nod.
Jacob Elordi gives another great performance after his modern day aristocrat with a cut glass English accent in Saltburn, this time sounding like ….. ‘the king’. I like it when accents are attempted* and even better when they work. (*I’m looking at you, Joaquin).
Also starring Dagmara Domińczyk, who was brilliant in Succession and the recent comedy film, Bottoms, here playing Priscilla’s conflicted mother, Anne.
Cailee Spaeny in Priscilla
The film belongs to Cailee though, she gives a layered performance from young girl to young woman. Priscilla was 14 when she first met Elvis, was 21 when they got married, 22 when she had Lisa Marie and then 26 when she finally left Elvis. The film charts the journey of her life with Elvis from 1959 to 1972 and Cailee gives everything to the role and will be and is being lauded as deserved.
The music choices in the film are pure Sofia, she has a punk rock aesthetic. Her hand was forced by the Elvis estate who didn’t give permission to use songs by ‘the King’ and consequently she gets her creative on and her choices are eclectic and brilliant. We get Alice Coltrane, The Ramones, Frankie Avalon, Brenda Lee and the Righteous Brothers and a brilliant use of ‘I Will Always Love You’ by Dolly Parton. By not using Elvis’ music we get to focus much more on Priscilla. This is a good thing. His songs would probably have gotten in the way and maybe sucked all the air out of the screen.
Jacob Elordi, Cailee Spaeny and Sofia Coppola on the set of Priscilla
The film never really leans into the emotional highs of the story and that’s definitely a conscious director’s decision. Again, unflashy and embued with a welcome unsentimentally.
The film was well directed, performed and presented. Cailee is proving herself to be an actor of great talent and I loved how gentle the film was by treating the subjects with warmth and compassion and leaving all judgements at the door, where they belong. What a journey it must have been for her and we are lucky that Sofia Coppola has given us a version of this story.
Distributed by A24 and Stage 6 Films and released in Australia on 18th January 2024. 114 Minutes
In July 2023, my friend Adam Nightingale and I released the first episode of our new podcast: PUNCHING UP THE MOVIE PODCAST
Adam and I have known each other for 33 years. We met in 1990 at drama school and have remained firm friends ever since. We love films and have been writing emails about cinema to each other dating back to 2000. The emails got longer and longer and I had the idea that it might make a good book (edited obv) and Adam proposed we start a podcast.
The idea behind Punching Up is that each episode we choose a classic, cult or beloved film from the treasure trove of cinema that one or both of us have a problem with and then we discuss, dissect, debate, discover and sometimes disassemble the perceived classic.
So far, we have released 7 official full episodes. You can find the pod where you get your usual podcasts (Spotify, Apple Podcasts etc) or click the links below to jump to an episode of your liking:
We have a few in the bag coming soon and will get back to recording more in a few weeks so keep an eye out and please email us with any comments or questions at: punchingupmoviepodcast@gmail.com
AND NOW………………
THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR Adam Nightingale’s best (and worst) films of 2023, this is a bit of a continuation of our email correspondence, a bitesize edition if you will…..
IT’S TIME FOR THE ADDZIES: Over to my Punching Up co-host, Adam…….
Prepare to be delighted and utterly outraged in equal measure.
The Addzies 2023 (based on movies I have seen in the cinema in 2023)
Best Films
Tar Obviously Blanchett is brilliant but there is something very Kubrickian about the way this is filmed that I think you would like, Damian.
Unwelcome This was my B horror movie of the year. It mashes up urban and rural horror wonderfully and alternates between three contrasting types of monster, (a terrifying London street gang, a family of Irish rural gangster led by Colm Meany and tiny Irish leprechaun monsters). It narrowly edged out Talk to Me (a better movie) and Suitable Flesh. It has stuck in my mind all these months more than those two arguably superior films.
Women Talking Best ensemble of the year. I go to church and would love to show this in church in a series of movies about faith that I doubt many Christians have seen. So pleased that Sarah Polley nabbed the Oscar for her screenplay on this.
Pearl Only film on the list I’ve seen twice at the cinema this year. Only film on the list I’ve bought. There’s nothing out there quite like it. My film of the year and the apex of A24’s female centric horror cycle.
John Wick 4 Reeves vs Yen vs Adkins and Sanada. Who could ask for anything more. Best action film of 23.
Strays* So sorry Damian, but I had to put it in. It was the film that made me laugh the most in 2023. Go to the bottom of the list and look at what I excluded to put this in and hate the movie even more.
Maigret Exceedingly low key gentle period police procedural but it lingered. Great, weary, weight of the world performance by Gerard D.
Past Lives I’ve never seen such an intimate film that looks so stunning on a large screen. I loved that this beautiful movie didn’t take sides. Its resolution was beautiful, right and fair to all three parties with the supernatural intimation of closure for two of the three characters. Were it not for Pearl being released in the UK in 23, this would have been my film of the year.
The Eternal Daughter The twin Tilda Swinton show. Damian, as a Hogg agnostic, why not give this one a go?
Eileen Again, of the rush of movies seen to round out the year, this one was the one I thought about the most. Second best ensemble of the year.
Godzilla Minus One Best blockbuster of the year. Delivers spectacle equally matched by heart breaking family drama. An example to all western makers of big budget franchise movies. Aquaman take note.
Wonka Damian, you’ll never see this, but it is wonderful. Included as much for the great time I had watching it with my nephew and niece as for the movie itself (which is wonderful). Chalamet out Wonkers Wilder.
The Boy and the Heron First Miyazaki I’ve seen since The Wind Rises. Beautiful, so imaginative, heart breaking and deeply elliptical. Shades of The Tempest and Alice in Wonderland but all Miyazaki. No one else could make parrots threatening.
Apologies to The Fablemans, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie and The Killer that almost made it in, but I loved the others just a little bit more.
Worst Films
Empire of Light So many people I like delivering incredulous and sometimes down-right bad work. A big blot in Sam Mendes copy book completely erased by the amazing work he did on on stage I witnessed in the shape of The Motive and the Cue at the National Theatre.
Cocaine Bear Should have been a great work of supreme bad taste. Settled on being simply bad.
Creed 3 Good set up squandered by weird crassly metaphoric visually arthouse pretensions in the final fight (and an annoyingly conciliatory ending that wastes a great villain) that undermines all that has gone before.
Elvis First film in years I’ve ever walked out of.
Chevalier
Indiana Jones of the Dial of Destiny
The Blackening
Five Nights at Freddy’s Horrible film. Equally horrible audience.
Exped4bles
Saltburn Never has so much great work been so utterly undone by a horrible and witless last 20 mins.
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom I was tired when I saw this and didn’t try too hard to stop the sleepy dust from settling.
Best Cinema Experience
Nosferatu at Nottingham Contemporary
Blood and Sand-silver nitrate 35mm screening at the National Film Theatre in London
Best Reissue
Stop Making Sense Second time I’ve seen this in a cinema. Pure joy and weird invention. Might be on its way to being a favourite. Certainly, now my favourite concert movie and Jonathan Demme movie.
Enter the Dragon Bruce Lee on the big screen is something to behold.
John Carpenter’s Christine
Most Disappointing Re-issue
Le Mepris It’s now official. I don’t like Godard (but I do like Bardot). Our next Punching Up episode ought to be a Godard. I suggest again Bande a Part.
Best Guilty Pleasure
Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance. Craig Fairbrass is the British Charles Bronson.
Tiger 3
Saw X
Best Performances
David Lynch (The Fablemans) Best cameo of the year. Who would have ever thought to cast him as John Ford.
Cate Blanchett (Tar)
Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and Mehdi Bajestani(Holy Spider)
Claire Foy and Jesse Buckley (Women Talking)
Mia Goth (Pearl and Infinity Pool) Actress of the year for me. There isn’t a performance out there like Pearl. The monologue, the audition dance piece, the rictus grin over the end credits. Add to that her incredible turn in the otherwise disappointing Infinity Pool, utilising her normal posh English baby voice to terrifying effect. The scene where she taunts Alexander Skarsgard at gunpoint while he cowers in a bus is on a par with her work in Pearl.
Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jnr (Oppenheimer)
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling (Barbie)
Gerard Depardieu (Maigret)
Greta Lee, Tao Yoo, John Magaro (Past Lives)
Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan and Paul Rhys (Saltburn)
Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon)
Tilda Swinton (The Eternal Daughter and The Killer)
Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shia Whigham and Marin Ireland (Eileen) Shia Whigham is my favourite supporting actor of the year. Marin Ireland also does great work on tv this year in Justified City Primeval.
Penelope Cruz (Ferrari)
Above and Beyond Award Tobin Bell in Saw X I feel that actors that are so good in movies like this are the true deserving recipients of Academy Awards.
So, there you have the Addzies of 2023.
Do you agree? Disagree?
*I loathed this film by the way.
All emails or comments will be forwarded on to him for him to retort.
Here’s to 2024, y’all. Let’s punch up together.
Be good, be gentle and remember: “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind, there are few” Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971)
the movie musings 