Steeped in Hairspray

No one is more skilled than Sofia Coppola at portraying the devastating loneliness and agony of being a teenage girl—desired but never understood, worshipped but never seen—with a crush. In her latest feature, Priscilla, the object of such adolescent obsession is Elvis Presley. The backdrop of Priscilla’s melancholy is Graceland, Elvis’s Memphis mock-manor estate. Inhabiting its claustrophic spaces, Priscilla makes herself small in the wake of his stardom. How can she love a man already beloved by the world? In the end, the film feels dreamlike, steeped in hairspray and winged eyeliner. The fever dream, like dating a rock star, is seductive—but it can never last.