As a filmmaker—in such works as Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette, Somewhere, and The Virgin Suicides—she has focused almost exclusively on innocence lost, on young girls stripped of their agency and thrust into worlds they’re not ready for.

It’s facile, obviously, to make the connection—there’s much more to Sofia Coppola, as an artist and as a person, than this bit of her biography. But that’s sort of the point. The young women she examines on screen—both fictional and real—all have interior lives that are rarely considered, much less explored by the world. Coppola aims to rectify that.

In that sense, Priscilla Presley, the focus of her latest feature, is the perfect Coppola subject. When you think of Priscilla Presley, what comes to mind? That she was pretty. That she married Elvis young. That her own life has been marked by tragedy (the loss of an ex-husband, grandson, and daughter). Rarely have we asked ourselves: What was it like for her to be courted by the most famous man in the world? Who really was she? (And rarely have we considered that she took Elvis’ flagging fortune after he died and turned it into an empire.)

When we meet her, she’s just 14. And Cailee Spaeny, the talented newcomer who plays Priscilla with a mixture of wide-eyed wonder and roiling strength, was at least partly cast because she looks so young. She’s at a diner on a base camp in Germany, where Elvis is fulfilling his military service, when she’s approached by a friend of Elvis’ inviting her to a house party.

The friend is a military man, and married, making him somehow less threatening, and it’s that veneer of respectability that ultimately convinces Priscilla’s parents (Dad is an army officer) to let her go. But what exactly is going on here? Why did Elvis’ friend approach Priscilla to begin with? Was he sent to stake out pretty American girls in Germany? Was he specifically looking for pretty young girls?

Coppola never answers that question, but it’s clear that Priscilla’s innocence is a huge part of what draws Elvis (Jacob Elordi) to her.

When Priscilla arrives at the party, in a babydoll dress with ribbons, she immediately becomes Elvis’ focus. He’s surprised she’s that young—he was hoping she was 16 or 17, not 14—but he’s undeterred.

He begins courting her—in almost a teen dream fantasy of what it might be like to date a rock star. He’s kind, gentlemanly, filled with gifts and compliments. He confides in her—telling her how much he misses his mother, who has recently died, and how much she reminds him of home.

Notably, he doesn’t have sex with her. And it becomes clear this is not because he’s waiting for her to turn 18, but because he suffers from what we used to call the “Madonna/whore complex.” Starlets, groupies, et al, are for sex (he cheats on Priscilla many times throughout their relationship). But Priscilla, whom he calls “Little One” and treats like some sort of precious Fabergé egg, is too pure for such things.

Once Priscilla is flown off the base and sent to live at Graceland permanently—she spends her senior year of high school at a Catholic school in Memphis where she’s gawked at and gossiped about—Elvis’ infantilizing of her becomes more frustrating.

For one, she wants to have sex. She has desires. But her desires are of no interest to Elvis. He begins to control every aspect of her life—what she wears, how she applies her makeup, the color of her hair (he likes black). And, once they get married and have Lisa Marie, we begin to see her chafe a bit under his authority. But whenever she complains, he threatens to exile her from Graceland—and his life. His temper comes out—he never strikes her, per se, but he becomes violent during a pillow fight when Priscilla shows a bit of gumption. He wants her to be demure, not aggressive.

Despite all the clothes, cars, and jewels a girl could ask for, Graceland becomes a kind of gilded prison for Priscilla. And life with Elvis becomes less a fantasy and more a nightmare.

Elvis doesn’t come across as a monster in this film—we sense his own arrested development, that he, too, was cast into a world of fame too soon, that he was permanently unmoored by his mother’s death. But this is not the hagiography of Baz Luhrmann’s recent biopic. Notably, we never see Elvis perform (except for a brief tinkling on the piano at a party and once, from behind, on stage as he wiggles his ass to the disco version of “Thus Spake Zarathustra”). This is officially because Coppola could not secure the rights to Elvis’ music, but it works for the film, which is laser focused on Priscilla’s journey, not his.

Elvis, too, seems to be searching for meaning—we see him reading Buddhist books and taking psychedelic drugs, trying to find purpose in his own journey. But he’s simply too much the product of the patriarchy to view Priscilla as anything other than his personal property, or to reflect even slightly on what she’s going through.

And while Elordi doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting that was required of Austin Butler—who sang and danced and packed on the pounds to play Vegas Elvis—he makes an excellent Elvis Presley, particularly as he goes from dreamy gentleman caller to cruelly indifferent spouse. I was concerned that his height (he’s 6’5”!) would be distracting, but it works here—underscoring the contrast between man and girl; between power and vulnerability. And Spaeny, who won Best Actress for this role at the Venice Film Festival, is a real find as Priscilla, drawing us into her fears and aspirations. She’s in almost every minute of the film and she holds our attention easily, conveying her feelings with the slightest flash of her eyes or jut of her chin.

The muted Priscilla is so different from Luhrmann’s Elvis, in terms of tone, tempo, and palate, it almost seems like a rebuttal. But this is what Coppola does. She luxuriates in the details of a “girly” exterior—pink shag rugs, ornate jewelry boxes, false eyelashes, wardrobes of glamorous clothing—but equally demands that we look beyond those things.

Again and again, her films proclaim: There is so much more to this woman than meets the eye. Do not be distracted by the shiny baubles—something far more interesting happening here.

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The film is also a love letter to that kind of man, the kind they don’t make any longer—mostly with good reason. Felix, an art dealer, gets chauffeured around in limousines (or when he’s really feeling feisty, he drives a cherry red vintage Alfa Romeo), he flirts with waitresses and charms everyone else, he passably speaks several languages, he drinks martinis at lunch, he knows the maître-d’ at every dimly-lit private club in New York. He’s a man who lives the good life. But he’s also a man who cheated on his wife, left his family in tatters, always in pursuit of the next woman who would make him feel irresistible. He has two adult daughters, one who apparently doesn’t speak to him. He, too, has regrets.

Lastly, it’s a love letter to New York. Both the cobblestoned Soho neighborhood where our hero, Laura (Rashida Jones) lives with her husband, Dean (Marlon Wayans), and their two adorable daughters, and Felix’s New York—the New York of places like The Knickerbocker and 21, where a man like Felix can boast that the Plaza is the best place to take your mistress because it has the most exits. Coppola romanticizes both Felix and this last gasp of 20th century New York—and recognizes that its time has passed.

The story is slight. Laura suspects that Dean, who has a new start-up business (a website of some sort; the film is vague) is cheating on her. It starts one night when Dean, returning from a business trip, zonked out on Xanax, climbs into bed and begins to kiss her quite passionately. “Hi,” she says, surprised. He jolts away, as though he thought she was someone else. Later, she finds a woman’s toiletry bag in his suitcase. He has a valid explanation—his (suspiciously gorgeous) co-worker Fiona couldn’t carry liquids on the plane, so he stashed it in his luggage for her. But still, with all his travel and a certain inertia that has set into their marriage, she worries.

She makes the mistake of confiding in her father, and he’s immediately convinced that Dean is cheating on her.

“He’s a man,” Felix says. “It’s his nature.”

Felix proposes that they spy on Dean, and Laura, at her wit’s end, reluctantly agrees. Somehow, spying on Dean involves lots of time in Felix’s limo and the aforementioned Alfa Romeo (he brings a tub of caviar for their “stakeout”), plus martinis at private clubs, a trip to Mexico, and luxe parties where Felix is stalking a particular piece of art (or woman) he has his eye on.

What becomes clear to us, and eventually Laura as well, is that Felix may indeed believe that Dean is cheating, but he is really just relishing the time spent with his adult daughter. There’s an absolutely beautiful piece of writing by Coppola where Felix describes to Laura the first time he recognized her as a real person. She was nine months old. I want to share the anecdote, but I’ll let it play out for you in the film. Suffice it to say, father and daughter share a sly sense of humor and mischief. Despite it all, they get each other.

I can quibble with a few things about the film: Despite the fact that Laura is a struggling writer and Dean has that start-up company, they are obscenely rich, living in a loft-like space with soaring ceilings, sun-drenched exposure, and wall-length windows (I guess it’s supposed to be her dad’s money?). Also, and this is my biggest issue with the film: I never really believed in Dean and Laura’s marriage. It’s a tricky thing—the whole film is based on the rift between them, the puzzle of whether or not he’s cheating on her. But still, something about their rhythms together felt too forced and stiff, even for an emotionally estranged couple. (Wayans does convincingly play a great roll-on-the-floor with silliness dad, though.)

Still, these are minor concerns. On the Rocks is a delight from beginning to end. Gorgeously acted, deeply felt, but remarkably light on its feet. Consider this review my love letter to Sofia Coppola.

On the Rocks will be playing in theaters, including the Senator Theatre, on October 9th and will be available to stream on Apple TV+ starting October 23.

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