Priscilla Beaulieu was 14 years old when she met 24-year-old rock star Elvis Presley. It is unseemly that the musician immediately acted on his attraction to her. And while lore, including Priscilla Presley’s 1985 autobiography, Elvis and Me, has it that there was a sweetness to his courting of Priscilla, in another light you could call his overtures grooming. Priscilla, the new film by Sofia Coppola, has enough empathy and condemnation for both interpretations. Unlike Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, last year’s musical biopic that took a maximalist approach to its subject, Coppola opts for a quieter examination of the material. There are few dramatic episodes and, like her great 2006 film, Marie Antoinette, it’s the small scenes—almost always behind closed doors—that reveal the most about her characters.

Cailee Spaeny, a relative newcomer to Hollywood who some may remember as the murder victim in Mare of Easttown, plays Priscilla. Nearly every scene is told from her point of view. When we meet her, she’s a bored military brat in West Germany, passing the hours as best she can. She can barely hide her excitement when Elvis (Jacob Elordi) invites her to a party at his house and when she wanders into the fete, she sees a handsome, charismatic man, not a predator. Coppola frames her Elvis to make us concerned for teenage Priscilla: She is too young to grasp the subtext, toxic or otherwise, beyond the world-famous hunk nearby. As if to underscore the point, Elvis performs “Great Balls of Fire,” an undeniably fun tune written by Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 22. This is the only time Elvis performs in Priscilla—that part of his life has little interest to the director. Throughout their courtship and marriage, Coppola depicts the deeply unfair power dynamics between the couple and how, finally, Priscilla is able to assert herself.

In nearly every scene, Priscilla finds herself the subject of control, a kind of willful prisoner. In her family home, at least, there is the normal condition of parents who know what’s best for their child, although Elvis uses his celebrity and charisma to dismantle the nuclear family institution. The key difference between the West German base and Graceland is how, under the watchful eye of the Elvis Industrial Complex, Priscilla’s best interests are secondary to his. It is a disturbing situation made bearable by Coppola’s sense of drama, and the strength of the performances from Spaeny and Elordi. Many scenes involve Priscilla alone, nursing jealousies or testing the limits of her confinement. Like any prisoner—including Marie Antoinette—she finds true freedom in the little things that do not matter to the people watching her. The most revealing scenes involve Priscilla looking in mirrors, creating an interior life to compensate for her lack of control (together with cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, Coppola opts for a muted palette of pale blues, drab browns, and soft grays that further suggests the need for a rich imagination).

The scenes between Priscilla and Elvis offer a warped sense of marital bliss. They are happy together, at least when Elvis dominates every situation, and at first Priscilla is so demure (or just young) she doesn’t mind. To her, it is perfectly normal to be dressed to her partner’s standards, to remain chaste until their marriage in 1967, eight years after their first meeting. (Beaulieu moved to Graceland in 1963.) Coppola, using the 1985 autobiography as the inspiration for her film, doesn’t need high drama to reveal the cracks in this untenable situation. There is a fascinating scene midway through the film where, during a pillow fight, Elvis gets too rough. He apologizes almost immediately, but not before saying he cannot abide a game where the man does not “win.” Priscilla does not blame herself, an improvement of her early impulse to internalize his mistakes. However, Elvis is so manipulative that, even into motherhood, Priscilla rationalizes and tolerates so much horrible conduct.

Spaeny and Elordi do not reveal the greatness of their performances right away. At first, they are merely convincing as a teenager and a heartthrob. Elordi’s Elvis could not be more different from Austin Butler’s: his musical talent is ancillary, and Elvis’ signature voice is more of a stutter than a drawl. (Luhrmann’s film cast Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla, but her role is significantly diminished.) Spaeny conveys a palpable mix of frustration and innocence. Those qualities develop and curdle as Priscilla continues, with the unhappy couple reckoning with a strange life as lonely, desperate adults. Bad habits become addictions, and they only find freedom apart, not together. By the time the film winds down and Priscilla has reached adult levels of self-determination, it’s remarkable that this woman and the naive girl could be played by the same person.

Priscilla has an unusual timeline for a biopic. Life unfolds for its subject slowly, dwelling on her teen years. Adulthood and her final decision to leave the marriage transpire with far less screen time. At first, this disproportionate attention seems to rob Priscilla of her agency, since she is so much more than a teenager who caught the attention of a celebrity. Then again, Priscilla has the wisdom to understand how seemingly mundane moments of youth carry more weight than the banality of adulthood. It is the same reason why we remember specific moments from our adolescence so acutely, and each subsequent decade seems to unfold faster than the last. That languid idea of youth must have been more acute for Priscilla because Elvis took more from her than he gave. Coppola recognizes the excitement and limits of adoration and puppy love, but between Elvis’ stature and the suggestion of Stockholm Syndrome, Priscilla could not see how she was suffocating. Therefore, Priscilla must acknowledge that suffocation for her, and us.

Priscilla opens in theaters nationwide on Nov. 3.