Are you gonna be her or not?

Priscilla — 3.5/5

It's a princess story. It's the dream of every child who ever loved a star. "The voice on radio is singing just for me." Plucked from the shadows to stand next to a sun; nothing particularly special about them other than that they, for some reason, were chosen. Priscilla is Bella from 'Twilight'. And not just the girl with no real personality or personhood outside of a relationship with a dangerous man. If the Colonel truly wanted to keep the relationship quiet because of what it would have done to Elvis' fandom, Priscilla ends up being the story that props up all the other fan stories we make up in our head: if it happened to her, then it could happen to me, too. No matter whatever real love was between them, the most damning thing the movie could have done is what it did: make Priscilla look as young as she was. Jacob Elordi plays Elvis as a shiny vampire, and he shines bright, that guy. He doesn't embody Elvis like Austin Butler—or does he really seem to try that hard to—but he's perfectly cast as the mercury that can bring the party high or low at any moment. Casual power, violence, and easy to forgive for it all. In every thing I've seen him in, he seems to be eternally the best and worst boyfriend you could ever have. Austin Butler became Elvis, but all Jacob Elordi needed to be was the Elvis that isn't really there. Even before he was gone, he was always leaving. The movie as a whole is a great complement to Baz Luhrman's iconical take—that's a movie designed to make you fall in love with his talent, to bring you into his world. This movie always keeps you at the doorstep to that larger world. So in that, it does a great job of creating the world Priscilla lives in. This is what being rescued looks like: a princess stuck in a different castle. 

The movie makes me think maybe all of Sofia Coppola's movies are princess stories? I'd like to re-look at some of her other movies to check against it. She herself is a princess within a mythical movie kingdom. Look at these dolls and these nice outfits and fancy places and see how uncomfortable I am and how cold it all is.