Featured Image Credit: A24
Topics: Film and TV
Stewart Perrie
Critics are raving about the new biopic about Priscilla Presley and her marriage to Elvis.
Aptly titled Priscilla, the biographical drama has been adapted from the widow's memoir titled Elvis and Me and stars Cailee Spaeny as the titular character and Jacob Elordi as the singer.
It dives into what it was like meeting the King of Rock and Roll when she was a teenager as well as their long and complicated relationship.
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It premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and Variety says it received a seven-minute standing ovation.
Priscilla tried to hold back tears during the overwhelming response to Sofia Coppola's film.
Critics have raced to give their first impressions of the film and it has been nothing short of glowing.
The movie has debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with an incredible 100 per cent rating.
Rolling Stone's Marlow Stern said: "People may fault Coppola for dipping her toe in familiar terrain, but it’s hard to argue with the result: a transportive, heartbreaking journey into the dark heart of celebrity, and her finest film since Lost in Translation."
Richard Lawson from Vanity Fair added: "Priscilla is neither lurid nor sugar coated. It’s a sensitive, if slight, look at a young woman rousing from a dream and confronting waking life."
The BBC's Nicholas Barber wrote: "A quietly affecting, sympathetic tribute to the kind of person who is a supporting character in most biopics."
During a press conference at the film festival, Priscilla was asked about the movie and having her story told in such a big way.
“It’s very difficult to sit and watch a film about you, about your life, about your love,” Presley said.
“Sofia did an amazing job. She did her homework, we spoke a couple of times and I really put everything out for her that I could.”
The conversation turned to how she was only 14 years old when she met Elvis as he was becoming an international sensation.
But she shut down any speculation that they had sex before they got married.
“It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why,” she said.
"And I really do think because I was more of a listener. Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother — which he never, ever got over.
"And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection. Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life — not in numbers.
"That was the attraction. People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t. I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old.
"We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship.”
Priscilla is set for release on October 27 in the US and will premiere in UK cinemas on Boxing Day.