The devil is in the details.
I have doctors looking after me, he growls.
I dont need a second opinion.
Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny in ‘Priscilla’A24
Biopics, especially biopics that never deviate from the facts of a life, often feel plodding.
Told from his former wifes point of view, however, it becomes another story altogether.
She is in ninth grade, living on the U.S. military base.
We meet her parents.
As portrayed here, the young Priscilla was demure, pliable and virginal.
Presley tells her father he likes talking to her.
She barely talks back.
What does she have to say, after all?
Hows my little one?
It is a damning view of a man and eventually a marriage.
Plain colors, he insists; a small woman cant wear prints.
She must dye her hair black.
She cant work, because she must be there when he calls.
Thats what he needs in a woman.
What he doesnt need, apparently, is what her parents would reasonably have feared.
Sex is less attractive to him, clearly, than the control he can exert by withholding it.
The strength of her films is that seems to see everything.
Small things, but Coppola finds the meaning in them.
