November Highlights Part 4: Priscilla & Saltburn

Is it that time of year when you're jonesing to watch some movies written AND directed by women? Or do you just want to stare at Jacob Elordi for a few hours? Well, here are two movies from our best female filmmakers that feature intriguing supporting performances from Jacob Elordi!

Priscilla: Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, this is a beautiful and sweeping story of Priscilla Beaulieu, the woman who would meet and marry and eventually divorce Elvis Presley. Played with heartbreaking innocence by Cailee Spaeny (an Oscar nomination seems inevitable), we begin the movie with the fourteen-year-old (!) Priscilla, who has moved with her family to Germany, where her father is stationed at a US military base. She is lonely and homesick, and for some godforsaken reason, after meeting her at a party, the 24-year-old Elvis (played by Jacob Elordi), sets his sights on dating her. 

Prsicilla's parents are weirded out by this, but what is weirder is that they still allow it, which is how you know they are American, because what Indian parent would ever allow this kind of nonsense (they might sanction a child marriage, of course, but not child dating!). The entire film unspools like a guide to grooming a teenage girl, but the pedophile in question is Elvis Presley and everyone around him seems totally fine with arranging things so Priscilla can stay over at Graceland and be with him while he continues to have affairs and break her heart.

This movie is mostly melancholy vibes with incredible costumes, makeup, and hairstyles. After all the bombast of last year's Elvis, it's nice to get a film from a woman's perspective of this famous man, and surprise, surprise, like many famous men, he had oodles of talent and treated women like accessories. You spend this entire movie watching Priscilla fight to be with this man and wanting to go "oh sweetie, no." And then you watch the inevitable realization dawn on her that this was a bad decision. It's a tale as old as time, but in the hands of Sofia Coppola, it's a tale that's still beautifully and compassionately told. 

Saltburn: Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, this is yet another glorious confection for your eyeballs. If you loved Promising Young Woman (and who didn't?), this candy-colored aesthetic is going to feel familiar, but Fennell has now moved the action to her home turf of rich and ridiculous British people. And oh, is it divine. 

The movie follows Oliver Quick (the incredible Barry Keoghan, in a performance that ought to get some awards attention this year), a young scholarship student at Oxford University in 2006. He is lonely and ignored but when he somehow befriends Felix (Jacob Elordi, playing a VERY different character from Elvis), a rich kid who seems to have a penchant for picking up strays, what follows is a very intense and volatile friendship. Eventually, Ollie is invited to stay with Felix at his family estate of Saltburn for the summer. What follows is a hedonistic and wild visit that is going to lead to some terrible revelations and some incredibly caustic humor about Felix and his family. Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant play Felix's parents, and let's just say they capture British aristocratic daffiness and repression to absolute perfection. 

The soundtrack is wonderful, the acting is brilliant, and the screenplay veers wildly into every genre, managing to be both horrifyingly funny, thrilling, and macabre. It is a mind-bending marvel that will keep you glued to the screen for two hours and you will definitely hear some gasps in the audience as some twists and turns come flying out at you. It's everything you want from a movie, and more, so don't delay. Take a trip to Saltburn immediately.