Sofia Coppola

Marie Antoinette

Priscilla

Greetings and salutations, dear reader, I hope you’re doing well amid the post-Halloween-pre-Christmas-fuck-Thanksgiving fog. I’m just as delirious and delusional as ever, and coming off of a high of having a couple of articles published which should, in theory, bolster me to get more writing published …but I am tired and I love the comfort of my own blog too much. We’re fully settled into a sleepy Autumn lassitude here, and apart from the noir we explored last week, there are very few new films I desire to see. This is the chilly and nostalgic time of year when I really enjoy rewatching old favorites and comfort movies, but if I do watch something new, I often crave a certain degree of coziness. That’s why it felt like the perfect time to explore the filmography of one of my all-time favorite directors: Sofia Coppola. I’ve seen nearly every film Sofia Coppola has directed, even her iconic Little Mermaid Funny or Die sketch (which she actually had no part of but you could’ve fooled me), and I’ve found things to love about every single project—even if Lost in Translation left me a bit lost. She is as ambitious and distinct of an auteur as Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino, but her films should never be boiled down to just their style(s), no matter how stylish they may be. She’s the kind of director that shoots with empathy, humanity, and an eye for painstaking detail. She can transport you to any place or moment in time, no matter how foreign or distant, and can make it seem familiar and lovely. Her films are doused in dreamy aesthetics but are never without significant, complex substance, and that’s why I love her. When her latest film was announced, I was eager to see it, and when my good friend Meredith suggested I watch it alongside an old classic of Sofia’s, I simply had to oblige. I clearly love the Coppolas—her father Francis, her niece Gia, her cousins Jason & Robert Schwartzman, and her cousin Nicolas Cage (just to name a few branches of this talented family tree)—but it was time for Sofia to have a double feature of her very own. My favorite Sofia film is the depressingly beautiful The Virgin Suicides, which is one of the very first films I (half-assed) reviewed on this blog, but my second favorite of hers is another Kirsten Dunst early-oughts classic: Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette follows the short and scandalous life of Queen Marie Antoinette, and all of her decadence, kindness, and misunderstood glory. In the hands of any other director, Marie Antoinette would likely be mocked or exaggerated, or, at the very least, hypersexualized in the least self-aware way possible. But Sofia Coppola always finds a way to sympathize with her subjects, and showcase their inherent, relatable vulnerability. We meet Marie (Dunst) at her happy home in Austria, but she is soon plucked from one picturesque estate to another, as her mother marries her off to the Dauphin of France, Louis-Auguste (Jason Schwartzman), in an attempt to ease the tensions between their two countries. Marie must leave everything Austrian behind—her family, friends, clothes, and her beloved pug named Mops (who, in all actuality, did not really exist.) Her new home, Versailles, comes not just with an arranged marriage, but with a judgmental court, and an intricate set of rules. She learns to uphold traditions and practices that are foreign and silly, to herself and to us, as an audience. This is part of Sofia Coppola’s brilliant direction: she can always find a way to make even the most unattainable and distant figures seem relatable and timeless. We’re taken along this wild, transformative, tense journey with Marie, as if we, too, have been forced out of a peaceful childhood into a stifling, pressure-filled gilded cage. Even as Marie adapts to her new French life full of odd humor and double-standards and a queer-coded sex-drive-less husband, the company she is forced to keep never seems pleased with her. Marie almost never has a moment to herself, and has every quirk and behavior of hers questioned or ridiculed. She is expected to have sex with her disinterested husband, to be a political and socioeconomic expert, to balance the challenging social dynamics at Versailles, all while remaining as dainty and benign as the frills and doilies that surround her. It is a painful, frustrating, gut-wrenching story wrapped in pastels and diamonds and macarons. And while Coppola could’ve easily leaned into the tragedy and morbidness of Marie Antoinette’s story—particularly her ending—it is instead handled with a clear sensitivity and care and respect to give this woman a chance to tell her story, from her perspective. Marie Antoinette is careful not to criticize or aggrandize this complicated figure, but the dazzling set pieces and costuming and casting can’t help but glamorize this tale. When girls are infantilized in film I always take pause, but Sofia often does this to her female characters (and in tonight’s two films, the male characters as well) to underscore predatory power dynamics and the fact that so many girls throughout history have had their childhoods shortened by the whims of men. Marie had the weight of Europe on her shoulders, and amid all of the gorgeous visuals and ludicrous lushness and nostalgic anachronistic music, this weight is still incredibly tangible. Sofia did more than carve out her own place among films like Barry Lyndon and Amadeus—where classic tales are told with a humorous, modern twist—she created an indie sleaze era masterpiece for the bored masses that has stood the test of time, Tumblr, and Twitter. Her latest project, Priscilla, features a similarly somber but starry-eyed story, an anachronistic soundtrack (the Presley estate refused the use of Elvis’ music), and an obvious intention to respect the history that is being captured and remembered. Priscilla, based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, follows the story of a young Priscilla and her life with Elvis Presley—as he rose to greater fame, and as she came of age. We meet a 14 year old Priscilla Beaulieu (played by Cailee Spaeny) in 1959 Germany, where her father is stationed. She sits at a malt shop counter and does her homework, until she is approached by a friend of Elvis’, who invites her to one of his infamous parties on the base. Though her parents are extremely reluctant, Priscilla attends and catches the eye of a charming and intimidating Elvis (played by an insanely hot Jacob Elordi.) From the moment they meet, the two are inseparable and connected by pure, innocent, stupid love. Priscilla’s whole world then becomes intrinsically linked to Elvis and his poor white trash sensibilities. Elvis, at the peak of his fame, is enlisted and shipped off elsewhere and requests that Priscilla wait for him. And when Elvis later returns to the states and has Priscilla move into Graceland with him, he requests that she wait for him while he becomes a movie star—to which she politely, drearily obliges. She is swept up into the chaos of Elvis’ life—from the frenzied Memphis Mafia he calls his entourage, to his father’s stern rules, to the tabloids that report on every affair that Elvis engages in. All the while, Priscilla is still in high school!!! She’s forced to spend her days in a Tennessee catholic school and her nights at the large and lonely Graceland estate while Elvis is off in Hollywood—every moment of interiority and longing and insecurity captured without Priscilla uttering a single word of it. She is a five-foot-four emblem of patience and purity whom Elvis dresses as he wants and drops to the side when a new opportunity arises. Elvis is much older than Priscilla and Coppola never lets us forget this—by virtue of this film existing at all, we are given a freshly convoluted perspective on this romance, and therefore it serves as a reminder of its inherent toxicity and tumultuousness (which might be needed after Baz Luhrmann’s rose-tinted ELVIS brushed right past these facts.) The film displays a form of abuse that is so insidious and at times subtle, and while Priscilla herself may see the relationship differently, Coppola’s film expertly expresses the nuanced experiences of this woman’s life, and how it was shaped by the fame machine called Elvis Presley. Jacob Elordi is stunning and terrifying as Elvis—a dichotomy he’s learned to inhabit quite well. Beauty is often a requirement of Sofia Coppola’s work so I’m not surprised that someone as hunky as Elordi would be cast, I was, however, taken aback by how good his Elvis impression was (especially after Austin Butler spent two years method acting his way into his Elvis role when the only reference Jacob Elordi had was Lilo and Stitch.) I’ve never been particularly attracted to Elvis so it is interesting that it took one of the most revealing and ugly portrayals of this figure to finally make him hot to me… but I’ll save that curious thought for therapy. I knew that I would enjoy Priscilla, I knew that it would be delicate and charming and potentially heartbreaking. What I didn’t anticipate is how haunting Priscilla would be—how, despite every elegant costume and devilish smirk from Jacob Elordi, it would steadily send a chill down my spine. If anyone could craft a film that shows the joy and the pain of Priscilla’s story, if anyone could carefully portray it with the right amount of criticism and anguish and understanding, it’s Sofia Coppola. There’s just an inherent sensitivity to the way Sofia directs, that often has humanizing, uncomfortably relatable results. Like all of her films, I’m sure Priscilla will be reduced to its pretty aesthetic elements, but there is a shocking and unsettling story at play here that shouldn’t be disregarded. I’m forever going to be a Sofia Coppola fan, even if I don’t identify with every one of her films, even if she’s a nepo baby that comes from a long line of nepo babies. Her films offer a distinctly feminine, but uniquely universal perspective, in a world and culture where young girls and their interests are historically not taken seriously. Simultaneously relaxed and tense, cozy and uncomfortable, Sofia Coppola’s films are quiet forces to be reckoned with. So from one cinephilic girly to another, I love you, Sofia: never stop showcasing the divine, depressed feminine. Thanks for reading along this week, dear reader, let’s keep the coziness up and the seasonal affective disorder down. Ta ta for now!