Austin Butler elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 26: Austin Butler attends the photocall for “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 26, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)

CANNES, FRANCE: All was quiet along the French Riviera on Wednesday morning, so quiet in fact that you could hear the moored boats gently tapping their respective wharves. Cafés along Rue du Commandant André – a usually bustling strip for tourists – had all but a couple of guests enjoying their mid-morning piccolos. Even the journalist’s terrace at the Palais de Festivals had swapped his usual audio of world accents for a choir of seagulls, with many members of the press taking the morning to rest.

But come 6.30pm – a very rockstar hour to start the day – and the city of Cannes is alive. A sea of photographers in tuxes root their legs in position on the red carpet at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Makeup artists trail their famous clients out of hotels, ensuring one final stroke of illuminator makes it to the cheekbone. Sleek, black BMWs line the la Croisette, many with blacked-out windows to protect the identities of the stars inside.

One of them has American actor Austin Butler – who was recently named the newest ambassador of Cartier – travelling in its back, another Australian actress Olivia DeJonge. The young stars play Elvis and Priscilla Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, an epic, 159-minute biopic tracing the King’s rise to fame in the 50s, his marriage to Priscilla and his very complex relationship with his manager Colonel Tom Parker (played by Tom Hanks).

Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 25: Olivia DeJonge and Austin Butler attend the screening of “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 25, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 25: (L to R) Austin Butler and Olivia DeJonge attend the screening of “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 25, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images)

As I walk into the press screening, I ask one journalist why he has chosen to watch this Cannes season’s golden ticket from the corner seat in the back row.

“I just feel like I can take all of Baz in if I’m sitting further away,” he responded.

One minute into the film, I knew that man was right. Frenetic flashing montages, retro animations, split screens and colour, colour, colour. Luhrmann knows the past two years have been devoid of cinematic experiences and, in Elvis, he’s wasted no time in jump-starting our love for the theatrical with this highly melodramatic, fast-paced and buzzy sensory overload – one that should only be experienced in the cinema. It’s a Baz-illion times more Baz than we’ve ever seen, and I, for one, was overjoyed. It’s a dizzying good time.

“Suspicious Minds.” “Blue Suede Shoes.” “Hound Dog.” “Can’t Help Falling In Love.” “Heartbreak Hotel.” Yes, the task ahead of 30-year-old Butler was colossal. But early scenes will have you undoubtedly convinced that Luhrmann cast the right man as the pelvis-swivelling Rockstar himself.

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Austin Butler as Elvis. Credit: Supplied

There’s a scene minutes into the film where the Beale Street-loving Elvis – dressed in a bubblegum pink suit and a sheer, black lace shirt (Gucci could never) – shows a new audience some of his hypnotic moves as he fuses bluegrass with R&B, gospel and country. Those locomotive hips were gyrating against the strict social laws of 1950s America, and into the retinas of conservative watchdogs. But it’s the sexual reawakening women across the nation were experiencing when they watched Elvis move that is so titillating, as depicted in this scene when one woman, to her own surprise, lets out an almost primal scream.

“Girls were having feelings they weren’t sure they should enjoy,” says Colonel Parker’s voice-over. “He was a taste of forbidden fruit. She could have eaten him alive.”

It’s in this scene (and in one later on when Elvis sings “Suspicious Minds” in a white jumpsuit) that Butler becomes his alter-ego. Jolting, thrusting, he looks as though he’s being electrocuted with volts shooting up and down his body. Luhrmann has also backlit Butler many times and Butler’s profile silhouette – his long hair, his jawline – is truly like looking at the real Elvis. The actor is actually singing in the film as well.

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Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker. Credit: Supplied.

“I basically put the rest of my life on hold for two years. I just went down the road of obsession,” Butler, in a deep voice, tells a packed-out press room at the Cannes Film Festival. “I would watch one second of a clip over and over and over and look at what his eyes were doing, what his hands were doing and practise that until it was in my marrow. The reason why he moved in that way and why he spoke in that way – that meant farming his inner being.”

Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 26: Austin Butler attends the photocall for “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 26, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)
Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 26: Olivia DeJonge, Austin Butler, Baz Luhrmann and Tom Hanks attend the photocall for “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 26, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)

“That’s the tricky thing,” he continues, swooshing his long hair back with his left hand. “You see Elvis as this icon, or as wallpaper of society. Finding a way to strip all of that away and find the very human nature of him that was deeper than all of that, that’s what was fascinating to me and getting to explore that was just the joy of my life.”

Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 26: (L-R) Tom Hanks, Director Baz Luhrmann, Austin Butler and Olivia DeJonge attend the press conference for “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 26, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Pool/Getty Images)

If you need more convincing, just look to the real Priscilla Presley. Luhrmann met with Priscilla, her daughter Lisa-Marie Presley and her granddaughter Riley Keough prior to making the film. When a final cut was ready for viewing, the family were the first to see it.

“I think Priscilla had fear about seeing [the movie]. This is her life,” Luhrmann says. “So much has been said about the icon in Elvis – he’s been wallpaper, he’s been a God. There’s been so many things that are just not true. What would we do? Would we paint him as this or that?”

Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 25: Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Priscilla Presley and Austin Butler attend the screening of “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 25, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Butler was with Luhrmann at the same time Priscilla was watching the film, an anxious three-hour wait that the Australian director struggles to put into words. As she exited the theatre, Luhrmann caught word that she was crying.

“I thought, ‘Oh no, what have we done?’” says Luhrmann, his head in his hands as he re-lives the moment to the international press.

Soon after, he received a text message from Priscilla.

“She said, ‘I just wasn’t ready for that’,” recalls Luhrmann. “’Every breath of Austin’s, every move, the spirit, the humanity, the man – not the icon, not the guy in the trashy suit… if my husband was here today, he would look at [Austin] and say ‘Hot damn, you are me.’”

I can almost feel Luhrmann’s relief from my seat.

“Just like Elvis said, ‘critical people have their job’. Some do it well, some not so,” he continues.

“But no critic, no review, is ever going to mean more to us than the woman who was married to Elvis Presley.”

“He was a father, he was a husband, and a grandfather, and a person. And they have children and their children will have children. And the greatest review I ever got in my life is from Priscilla saying, ‘And now they have something that they can look to. And your view is the truth to the humanity of the man.’”

Austin Butler Elvis
MEMPHIS, TN – FEBRUARY 1: Elvis Presley with his wife Patricia Beaulieu Presley and their newborn daughter Lisa Marie Presley February 1, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Austin Butler Elvis
Credit: Austin Butler and Olivia DeJonge as Elvis and Priscilla Presley. Credit: Supplied.

Butler was moved with emotion that same day. So much technical work had gone into embodying the rockstar. When filming one scene where Elvis performs “Hound Dog” Butler says he watched the playback and felt he was over-acting. He needed to do it again, he told Luhrmann. He needed to strip it back and do it again.

“You have to get through the nerves, and then just feel alive.” 

“[Priscilla’s response] just brought tears to my eyes,” Butler adds. “There’s never been a person that I’ve never met that I’ve loved more than Elvis,” he says. “I’ve lived with him now for three years so the feeling of doing him justice and really bringing to life this extraordinary man – and with Priscilla, Lisa-Marie, Riley and the entire family – I could not be more overjoyed.”

Austin Butler Elvis
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 25: Olivia DeJonge attends the screening of “Elvis” during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 25, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage)
Austin Butler Elvis
Australian actress Olivia DeJonge (L) and Priscilla Presley leave the Festival Palace following the screening of the film “Elvis” during the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 25, 2022. (Photo by LOIC VENANCE / AFP) (Photo by LOIC VENANCE/AFP via Getty Images)

Let’s talk DeJonge. Well, I couldn’t be prouder to be an Australian in Cannes right now. The 24-year-old from Melbourne, who moved to Peppermint Grove in Perth when she was five years old, is an incredibly gifted young talent. Her scene really comes when Priscilla decides to leave Elvis and leaves him in tears at the bottom of their home’s staircase. Seeing her tiny frame and youthful face at the conference just had my mind boggled. How does someone so young have the confidence to take on a role so historically significant?

“You’re always going to grapple with whether or not you’ve illuminated something real and human in [a character who is still alive],” DeJonge says. “I think there’s a huge responsibility, [Priscilla] is such a key part of this narrative and of Elvis’ legacy. Everything that she’s done since they parted ways is such a testament to their love. The fact she’s happy and supporting the film here in Cannes means the world.”

Hanks, whose character is “a rather ingenious pimp of the carnival who seemed to enjoy robbing a little kid out of an extra 25 cents just as much as he enjoyed robbing a casino in Las Vegas out of $45 million”,  talked about shooting in Australia during the incredible COVID restrictions.

“One thing that was frustrating was that we did shoot this under the COVID protocols so there were a lot of people who did not see each other every day,” Hanks says. “As a matter of fact, the joy of a common hair and makeup trailer was lost, we were all separated. I never got to see Austin until he was all done up as Elvis on the set. It was not the easiest of circumstances to make a movie but I have to say, it was a fabulous studio, the film industry down there is as great as exists anywhere in the world and I would return on a moment’s notice, just not quite with the same amount of COVID attention.”

It’s now the morning after the premiere. The French Riviera is quiet again with what feels like the entire city sleeping off their rockstar hangovers.

Elvis hits Australian cinemas June 23.