Sofia Coppola used Priscilla Presley’s memoirs to draw PriscillaFeature film with Cailee Spaeny in the title role and Jacob Elordi as Elvis Presley.
Filmed in Toronto last year, Priscilla shows “all the stages of adolescence and the life of a young woman in an expanded world, a bit like Marie Antoinette,” Sofia Coppola told Vogue magazine.
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Because, admits the screenwriter, who was inspired by the autobiography “Elvis and Me”, director and co-producer – together with Priscilla Beaulieu Presley: “I was impressed by the fact that the setting is unusual and yet it has all the phases goes through everything she goes through.” young girls go. “Elvis and Priscilla are a legendary couple, but we know very little about their point of view,” she said during the press conference to present the film at the Venice Film Festival, where Cailee Spaeny won the Volpi Cup for Best Female Performance for her role as Priscilla .
Published in 1985, the work describes the then 14-year-old Priscilla’s meeting with Elvis Presley in 1959. We then discover their romance, their marriage in 1967, the birth of Lisa Marie nine months later and finally their divorce in 1973. Priscilla is less a feminist film than an examination of an atypical journey, but still “universal”, as Sofia Coppola calls it.
“I focused on Priscilla’s point of view. That’s actually one of the things I liked about her book: she puts us in her shoes. So I could remember having a crush on an older man and a celebrity at that age. I could imagine myself in his place and tried to make this film from his point of view. “What I value about cinema is that we can live someone else’s story, a story very different from ours,” she told the audience of journalists in Venice.
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“The love of my life”
Although Priscilla Presley was present at the press conference without being a participant herself, she still wanted to clarify a few points about her meeting with Elvis Presley when she was only 14 years old and he was 24 years old, as well as the nature of their relationship.
“It is very difficult to watch a film about yourself, about your life and about your love,” she said, visibly very moved. Sofia and I spoke several times and gave her all the information she needed.”
“My parents never really understood why Elvis was so interested in me. When we met in Germany, I listened to him and he confided everything to me, he spoke openly with me about his fears, his hopes and the death of his mother, from which he never recovered. I was the one who listened to him and comforted him, it was really the foundation of our relationship. And even though I was only 14, I was more mature. People always think about the sexual side, but that wasn’t the case at all!”
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“We didn’t have sex [avant notre mariage]. Elvis was very kind, very gentle and he respected the fact that I was only 14 years old. He continued to call me when he returned to the United States and that was also part of our relationship, he told me about his problems. I don’t know why he trusted me so much. I know he liked the fact that I didn’t tell anyone I was seeing him, not even my friends at school. We built that relationship until I left him.”
“But I didn’t leave him because I didn’t love him. Elvis was the love of my life. It was his lifestyle that was a problem for me and all women will be able to understand that,” she stressed.
“Priscilla” hits theaters across the province on November 3rd.