Plinth

Sofia Coppola has now made two biopics: Marie Antoinette and Priscilla. Set two hundred years apart, they both focus on young women who marry into fame and wealth and must navigate the territory that comes with being forced to become an adult when still a teenage girl. The similarities were not lost on Coppola: 'I was just so interested in Priscilla’s story and her perspective on what it all felt like to grow up as a teenager in Graceland,' She told Vogue magazine. 'She was going through all the stages of young womanhood in such an amplified world — kind of similarly to Marie Antoinette.' But there were enough differences between Marie Antoinette and Priscilla Presley's stories for Coppola to take on the latter's memoir Elvis & Me, written by Presley with Sandra Harmon in 1985 and previously adapted into a 1988 miniseries starring Susan Walters.

The experience of making Marie Antoinette in 2006 was a baptism of fire for the director, who was fresh off a Best Original Screenplay win for Lost in Translation and working with a massive studio for the first time. Granted unprecedented access to the Palace of Versailles for shooting, she created a luxurious, thrillingly outrageous coming-of-age drama that eschews conventions of historical biopics by purposefully including anachronisms – such as a contemporary soundtrack and the famous lilac Converse shot – to create not necessarily a physical accuracy, but an emotional one. Across all her films, Coppola has always sought this intimacy between subject and audience, inviting us to see the world through the eyes of her characters, here fostering a delicate empathy rather than acting as a history lesson.

In taking on the vilified Queen of France who lost her head during the 1789 Revolution, Coppola doesn't seek to canonise her, even with the flattering casting of Kirsten Dunst, an indisputably charismatic screen presence. She deftly illustrates Marie Antoinette's self-absorbed nature and the lack of awareness that saw the French public turn against her, but also how women are often held to a higher standard than men, particularly in the eyes of history. Then there's the fact that Marie Antoinette was just 14 years old when she married into the French royal family; the same age Priscilla Beaulieu was when she met Elvis Presley.

This is how Priscilla opens, more or less – with the teenager being invited to meet Elvis at a party in his German home during his military service. She's an army brat who feels intensely lonely living with her parents and younger brother on a military base; the notion of not only spending time with people from home but also meeting a famous musician is understandably exciting. As a teenager, you're caught between two worlds, and the desire to grow up takes hold often without realising, excitement and anxiety clashing in such a way that one feels stubbornly worldly. 'You're just a baby,' Elvis coos to Priscilla when they first meet; she seems embarrassed by the suggestion, and will spend years attempting to prove her maturity to him, moulding herself to become the woman of his dreams, at first not realising it's her innocence and malleability that is part of the appeal.

The contortions of self that Priscilla performs in order to be with Elvis are where she truly differs from Marie Antoinette, who is initially out of place in the French court, but then bends its traditions and fashions to her will. Priscilla becomes a sort of living doll when she moves into Graceland, quickly convinced by Elvis to dye her hair and start wearing more make-up. He tells her to wear more grown-up, revealing outfits; on one occasion, when she wears a printed dress, he insults her appearance. She becomes an outlet for his worst impulses, continuously berated and at times abused – but also loved. Elvis is as quick to tell Priscilla how much he needs her as he is to spit venom her way. We understand why Priscilla stayed; why she was so caught in Elvis's orbit. In the scenes of him performing as Elvis, Jacob Elordi has the pull of the sun.

In the third act of both Marie Antoinette and Priscilla, a change takes place. As the two women mature, they eschew the lavish lifestyles that had once seemed so essential. Marie Antoinette plays at a pastoral idyll on the grounds of Versailles, trading all-night parties for goats and chickens. Priscilla moves to Los Angeles with her young daughter and begins studying martial arts; she dresses in the outfits Elvis once had forbidden and seems to grow into herself. With maturity comes a sort of self-reliance; a realisation that there is more to life than pretty things, and a prison is a prison, no matter how beautiful the bars.

Coppola's aim, then, in centring these two women's stories, is not to completely absolve them or to rewrite public perception, but to create a connection between their experiences and the experiences of countless others. She is less interested in history lessons, instead asking how we understand one another as human beings; what we see of ourselves in Priscilla's starry-eyed romance with a much older man, or Marie Antoinette's self-indulgence as a balm for her failure to conceive an heir.

At the end of Marie Antoinette, when fleeing Versailles at the outset of the revolution, the Queen looks out of the carriage window. 'Are you admiring your lime avenue?' her husband asks her. Marie looks back at King Louis, wrestling for composure, and corrects him: 'I'm saying goodbye.' Although the circumstances of her departure are vastly different from those in which Priscilla leaves Graceland, there's a commonality there in the collapse of one's world. One doesn't have to be an ardent royalist to understand the fear and sadness Marie Antoinette would have faced in leaving her home, and Priscilla's decision to leave Elvis – a powerful man with whom she had a young daughter – must have taken immense strength.

Beyond her signature feminine style which has become synonymous with a certain type of modern American cool, Sofia Coppola's films are defined by a sense of empathy and understanding. In focusing on the details, even when knowingly embellished with a wry smile, she creates films which are aesthetically and emotionally evocative. Under her eye, the biopic is not a static format for Oscar bait and showy historical monologues, but an opportunity to draw parallels between historical and contemporary girl- and womanhood, with all the joy, heartbreak and growth that comes between.

By Hannah Strong

To read more of Hannah Strong on Sofia Coppola, check out her monograph Sofia Coppola: Forever Young published by Abrams New York