Priscilla Presley has become the absolute star of the press conference presentation of Priscilla, the film directed by Sofia Coppola that is nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival and tells how she met Elvis Presley at just 14 years old, from 24, in Germany (where he was serving his military service), his complicated love story, his wedding, the birth of his daughter Lisa Marie – who died last January at the age of 54 – and the moment she decided to leave him.
Despite the fact that Presley was sitting in the front row and not at the table with the team led by Coppola and the actors Cailee Spaeny, who plays her, and Jacob Elordi, Elvis in fiction, the actress and businesswoman has answered the question from an Italian journalist who wanted to know which part of the film had moved her the most: “The ending. It’s hard to watch a movie about your life – it’s based on her memoir Elvis and me – and your love. Sofia has done a great job and I have tried to help her in everything I could”, she said completely moved and unable to hide her tears.
“For my parents it was very difficult to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why – he continued -. In Germany, Elvis opened his heart to me in every way: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, who never he was able to overcome. And I was the person who really sat there to listen and comfort him. That was really our connection. Even though he was 14, he was actually a little 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 at that time. He was very kind and loving and respected the fact that I was only 14 years old,” he said.
Priscilla, 78, has confessed that “I didn’t know why he trusted me so much, but he did. And I never, ever, ever told anyone that I was seeing him. So, we built a relationship and then our relationship continued until we I left. And it wasn’t because I didn’t love him, he was the love of my life. It was his lifestyle that made it so difficult for me and I think any woman can relate to that. But that didn’t spoil our relationship, as We are still very close. And, of course, we had our daughter and I made sure she saw her all the time. We never quite left each other. I just wanted to make that clear. Thank you,” he concluded in an unexpected intervention that has been applauded immediately afterwards by the journalists.
For her part, Sofia Coppola describes the film as “the drama of a girl trapped in the orbit of a rising star and who gradually burns as her dimension increases in space and time”.
“It is not a feminist story, but a human one”, emphasizes the director of Lost in translation, who 13 years ago already won the most important prize at the Mostra with Somewhere. One year after the biopic Elvis by Baz Luhrmann, it is now time to see on the big screen “Priscilla’s point of view and what that legendary couple had been like about whom, in reality, we know very little”.
