Sofia Coppola takes girlhood seriously. Her movies play with young women’s fantasies of whirlwind romances and transient indulgences, only to find a reality of loneliness and rot in the visually lush, warm-tinted frames. The star of Coppola’s Priscilla says the director’s streak of studying a teenage girl’s complexity and wading through power dynamics is evident in the new movie, too. “Sofia Coppola is my dream director, and it was the first time that I actually thought about who’s behind the camera,†Cailee Spaeny told Vulture at the film’s New York Film Festival premiere on October 6. She plays Priscilla Presley in the upcoming biopic, which begins with the protagonist being courted by her future husband (the latest Elvis is Jacob Elordi) when she is a freshman in high school and he is a grown adult.
“I think what’s so amazing about her films, and for me as a 14-year-old girl who found her movies, was that she gives young women permission to have a whole range of emotions and wants and needs — to feel deep sadness and to yearn for things,†the Venice Best Actress winner said. “They’re complicated people, often depicted wildly wrong in film and television.†For Spaeny, the film “slots right into her body of work.†“[Priscilla] lives in a rarefied, heightened world that I think a lot of young women can relate to,†she explained. “You know, falling in love for the first time, feeling like having a home and a child should be good enough and that’s everything that should fulfill her needs … She had this fantasy dream that all these young women wanted, and she had to look at herself closely and say, I want more from life than being the wife of someone.†We know the film isn’t popular with the Elvis estate, but it might not be popular with the tradwives, either.