Weekend Watch: Priscilla, Quiz Lady
It's one for the money, two for the show
Image Credit: A24
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Cailee Spaeny is in love with The King and Awkwafina lives for a quiz. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite
Sofia Coppola has always excelled at female-fronted stories. Not that that’s all she’s done (or all she is superb at as a filmmaker), but when she turns her attention to emotional dramas, the results are usually wonderful.
Priscilla sees her steering into that particular wheelhouse, telling the story of one of the world’s most famous women who for many people is defined by her relationship with an even more famous man.
When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) meets Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a vulnerable best friend.
Through Priscilla’s eyes, the film tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, covering the time between their first meeting and their fraught final separation.
This is the sort of film that, even with all the skill of its writer/director, lives and dies on its lead performance, and Spaeny is more than up to the task, guiding us through Priscilla’s complicated emotional journey and allowing us to connect to the woman behind the images. If you only know Priscilla Presley from other biopics of Elvis (or her sterling comedy work in the Naked Gun movies), this provides quite the education.
Elordi, naturally, has a little less to do as Elvis, but he’s also great, finding shades of the man that you don’t necessarily see even in the likes of Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s Elvis.
Focusing on a select period of Priscilla’s life is to the movie’s benefit, giving some necessary structure and bringing out all the drama that the story can generate without ever feeling exploitative.
Naturally, it can’t replicate the scale of Baz Luhrmann’s Presley biopic, but that’s not its intent. And though it does have a few issues (some of the montages used to show the passing of time feel unnecessary –– do we need to watch Elvis demolish a dead family member’s house sitting on Graceland’s expansive grounds that he considers an eyesore?), Priscilla is a fine addition to the biopic genre that increasingly avoids trying to squeeze a whole life into one film.
Priscilla is on wide release in the US now. It’ll be out in the UK via MUBI on 5 January.
Image Credit: Hulu
As you can probably tell from the film above and some recent posts, we are firmly in awards season, and I’ve been seeing some of the titles likely to be jostling for trophies and attention in the coming weeks and months.
Yet for all their worthiness and purported quality, I must admit that the most purely entertaining movie I’ve seen in a while is sitting quietly on streaming.
Written by Jen D’Angelo and directed by Jessica Yu, Quiz Lady is the story of Anne (Awkwafina), a tightly wound game-show-obsessed woman who must team up with her chaotic sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) to help pay off their mother's gambling debts. When Anne’s beloved dog is kidnapped, they set off on a cross-country journey to get the money they need; to do so, they must tap into Anne's skill set by turning her into the game-show champion she was always meant to be.
Quiz Lady works on a variety of levels. There’s the chemistry between the leads, which cleverly undercuts expectations by having Awkwafina play the more buttoned-down sister and Oh the wild child, a smattering of great gags that play on expected tropes and stereotypes and a healthy anchoring of heartfelt moments in between the sillier comedy moments.
But there are some outrageously funny gags to be found lurking here, most notably the revelation about the true motives of the canine kidnapper and one misplaced anger joke when the sisters are on their road trip. The film even manages to find fresh takes on such hoary old tropes as one character’s inconvenient drug trip and a closing montage of chyrons detailing the characters’ fates.
And around the central pair is a fantastic supporting cast including Will Ferrell (playing things buttoned down as quiz host Terry McTeer, channelling a combination of Mr. Rogers and his impersonation of beloved Jeopardy frontman Alex Trebek on Saturday Night Live), Tony Hale, Holland Taylor, Jason Schwartzman and in particularly fun (but also emotional) cameo, Paul Reubens.
It won’t be up for Oscars, but Quiz Lady is certainly a film I’d recommend seeking out if you need a laugh.
Quiz Lady is on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK now.