Page 39 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024

A sugared kiss of girlhood infatuation, desire, and entrapment, Sofia Coppola’s
adaptation of Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me follows the relationship between
the 14-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) and 24-year-old Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi).
It’s a perfect encapsulation of the gilded-cage themes Coppola has long been
fascinated by (see also Marie Antoinette and Lost in Translation).

Beautifully poetic and focused not on the musical career of The King but on the
identifiable psychological abuse he inflicted on his young wife, Priscilla is a not-to-be-
missed examination of the feminine perspective on the “great man”. Christina
Newland

5 January

Film

Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos reaches the peak of his impressive career so far with Poor Things,
the riotously weird story of a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) living in a sort of
steampunk version of the 19th century, who has created a reanimated woman from a
corpse. Said corpse, Bella (Emma Stone), has the mind of a toddler but the urges of a
grown woman, and soon, she wants to explore the world, find independence, and
learn about her body on her own terms. With its strange, sexually explicit, anarchic
quality, it is both one of the funniest films I’ve seen recently and a radically feminist

allegory. CN

12 January

Opera

Elektra

Royal Opera House, London