Presley, the performer, is fascinating. Presley the Man is portrayed as a rebel at heart, whose enduring love for black gospel and rhythm and blues echoed and amplified the emotion of the Civil Rights Movement.
Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge and Austin Butler on the red carpet at Cannes. Credit: Joe Maher / Getty Images
However, it is mostly about his relationship with Colonel Tom Parker, his manipulative manager, who after his death proved that he had defrauded his client with millions of dollars. Tom Hanks, usually an adorable film presence, plays Parker with reptile joy.
“As I heard in the anecdotes, the colonel was an attractive and wonderful boy who lit up a room,” Hanks said. “He brought joy to everything he did, along with just a little theft. The number of ways Colonel Tom Parker tricked people with pennies and pennies is extraordinary.”
Some of which, he added, he had incorporated into his own life. “Three something from every movie you make!”
Elvis was shot in Queensland with a cast list that could be a call for Australian acting talent.
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Olivia DeJonge, who plays Priscilla Presley, was in Cannes with Luhrmann and his wife, costume designer Catherine Martin. DeJonge spoke with the feeling of his responsibility to play someone who is not only alive, but still very involved with the subject.
“There’s that energy of feeling that person on your shoulder, constantly staring,” he said, his Australian touch surprised after seeing her on screen. “I think you’ll always have to struggle with whether you’ve illuminated something real and human in them. She’s a key part of her legacy. The fact that she’s happy and here supporting the film means the world.”
No expenses were saved at the party that followed the release of the film. Cannes’ collective memory previously celebrated Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge in 2001 as Cannes’ best party, but Elvis’ release pushed it to second place. A drone show wrote Elvis’ name in the sky over the Mediterranean, keeping Luhrmann motionless along with everyone else. The winners of Eurovision 2021, Maneskin, played a set before DJ Diplo woke up the dance floor.
Everything was appropriate for the cinema, of course: Luhrmann’s films are made to be public events.
“Our film is made of one thing and one thing, which is to bring the audience to the theater,” he told a news conference. “We wanted to make it theatrical.”
Elvis, Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley, 1970. Credits: Frank Carroll / Sygma
As usual, however, this lavish brand of theatricality has divided criticism.
Among the British press, The Telegraph described her as “a brilliant, epic jukebox sprinkled with irresistible central performance … the most flawless and striking thing you’ll see all year round, and much better for it.”
The Guardian saw this same joy in a different light as “another useless explosion of super bright celluloid-shaped sparkles.”
The tragic course of Elvis’ life – his decline in drug addiction and his death at the age of 42 – was not taken seriously. “Luhrmann is always concerned with rescuing Elvis from irony, failure and suffering.”
Among the influential film magazines, Indiewire spoke out against the “159-minute alteration,” while Variety bet in every way, describing it, on the one hand, as a two-hour duration and compulsively effervescent, delusional vision with malicious and compulsive energy. A 39-minute fever dream “that was also” a strange film: compelling but not always convincing, at once devastating and scattered “and finally” sadly imperfect “.
But she’s fine, my mother. A carnival show, according to Colonel Tom Parker in the film, should leave bettors with smiles on their faces. Elvis ’experience at Cannes certainly did.