In keeping with itsVenetian tradition,Chanelhosted its annual soirée at the city’s legendary Harry’s Bar during the 80th edition of the film festival on Tuesday.
This time, the event was all about celebrating “Priscilla,” the much-anticipated movie directed by longtime friend and ambassador of the French house Sofia Coppola, starring rising star Cailee Spaenyand Hollywood heartthrob Jacob Elordi.
After walking the red carpet for the film’s premiere on Monday — Coppola donning a Chanel haute couture black gown and Elordi in a Valentino double-breasted suit — the director and lead actor joined Chanel’s exclusive gathering, which also saw in attendance Priscilla Presley; Tilda Swinton; Benicio Del Toro; directors Wes Anderson and Alice Diop; Beatrice Grannò, as well as French actresses Élodie Bouchez and Emmanuelle Devos, among others.
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Coppola said approaching the premiere was both exciting and nerve wrecking. “This festival is very special to me as I was here with ‘Lost in Translation’ and won the Golden Lion here for ‘Somewhere,'” she said about scooping up the top prize in Venice in 2011.
Based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me” and slated to hit theaters on Oct. 27, her new movie intends to narrate the unseen side of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s relationship, from the long courtship to turbulent marriage, told from the title role’s point of view and spotlighting her passage into adulthood, her quest for identity and independence.
“She’s part of such an American mythic couple, but I didn’t know much about her and found her story fascinating and unusual while also surprisingly relatable — in how she went through things that most girls go through on their way to womanhood — just under an extreme situation,” Coppola told WWD.
Asked about the casting process, Coppola revealed she tapped young talent Spaeny with a little encouragement of a longtime friend. “I wanted an actress with depth and inner strength that could be believable to play age 14 to 29 and when I met Cailee I knew she could do it, and Kirsten Dunst had just worked with her and told me how talented she was to work with. So this gave me the confidence to cast her,” said Coppola, who first collaborated with Dunst at the time of her directorial debut“The Virgin Suicides” in 1999.
“When I met Jacob [Elordi], he had the charisma, charm and sweetness that I imagined Elvis had and I felt he could pull off the sensitive more private side of Elvis that Priscilla depicts in her story,” Coppola added.
One of the highlights of the movie includes the moment of the couple’s marriage, recalling the original headline-making ceremony in 1967. At the request of the director, Chanel specifically created the wedding dress worn by Spaeny in the pivotal scene: an embroidered gown nodding the original dress and inspired by the Chanel spring 2020 couture collection by Virginie Viard.
Taking 90 hours to make, the design combines a heavy white crêpe with Calais and Chantilly lace defining the upper part of the gown and the sleeves. On the back, an array of tiny buttons are also covered in lace.
In the scene, the gown is worn with a silk tulle veil held in place by a tiara needle embroidered by Atelier Montex using beads, glass tubes, glass crystals and silver rhinestones.
“The wedding scene is such an iconic moment; we’ve seen so many photographs and films.…To me, it’s really the pinnacle of her story,” Coppola said. “It’s American royalty and a fairy tale and so much of the story is the fantasy versus reality of this romance. So, for this heightened moment, when she becomes Mrs. Elvis Presley and her story shifts, as she finds her own way as an individual outside of this world, we needed to make a fitting wedding dress and Stacey Battat, the costume designer, suggested Chanel. Of course, because of my relationship with the house, I was happy to ask them…and Virginie Viard made her interpretation based on the historical dress.”
Coppola underscored that the affinity between Presley’s story and the brand was immediate also because the French company is based on strong women. “There are a lot of women that work there, it was founded by Gabrielle Chanel, and so it makes sense they support a lot of women artists. And Priscilla’s strength is really something that struck me because it must have taken her a lot of courage at that time, in the ‘70s, to leave this world and her whole identity as Mrs. Elvis Presley to find her own way.”
In addition to the wedding gown, a bottle of Chanel No. 5 fragrance also appears in the movie when the lead character moves into Graceland, affirming her new-found femininity.
Overall, Coppola said the main challenges of directing the film were “shooting such a big storyin 30 dayswith a limited budget” and “balancing making something Priscilla [Presley] would be happy with as an authentic depiction of her story while finding my way in my expression as a director.”
Asked about her favorite anecdote from the set, she pointed at how “everyone was all in to make this film.”
“I loved when our cinematographer, Philippe Le Sourd, wore a psychedelic tunic when shooting the LSD scene to all get in to character and help the actors know we were all playing along with them,” Coppola said.
The director has a long history with Chanel, tracing back to the summer of 1986 when she completed an internship with Karl Lagerfeld.“It was incredible but scary at first. I was 15 years old and was a bit intimidated, but Karl was so nice. It was in the ’80s; I ran errands, and it was thrilling to see a couture show,” she recalled.
Ever since, not only she attended several Chanel fashion shows and wore the brand on different occasions, but also collaborated with the French house on multiple creative fronts. In 1989 she designedthe costumes for her father Francis Ford Coppola’s movie “Life Without Zoë,” where she dressed the girls in Chanel suits; in 2012, she was photographed by Lagerfeld for the book “The Little Black Jacket: Chanel’s Classic Revisited”; in 2019, she madea video collage in tribute to the brand’s founder to mark the “Mademoiselle Privé” exhibition in Tokyo, and was officially named a spokesperson for the label.
The same year, Coppola codesigned the set ofthe 2020 Métiers d’art show in Paris with Viard and the following year she directed three short films encapsulating the Chanel legacy. In 2021, she directed the advertising campaign video for the 11.12 bag, while last year she directed the teaser film for the brand’s cruise 2023 show in Monaco.
“I love that Chanel gives me creative freedom and that they welcome my part of the conversation, and I enjoy it because I’m a fan and it’s something I love and connect to,” concluded Coppola.
