To watch “Priscilla” is to never be in doubt that it’s a serious and considered work by a conscientious filmmaker. The movie looks beautiful, and there are touches of wit and drama throughout that, on their own, add up to an almost worthwhile experience.

But there’s something off about “Priscilla” — or perhaps something missing.

There’s style, but not much in terms of a point of view. There’s perspective (we know whom we’re following), but we don’t know exactly why we’re following her.And aside from what must have been the fun of immersing into that world, it’s hard to identify writer-directorSofia Coppola’s reason for making a movie about Priscilla Beaulieu and her relationship with the man who became her husband, Elvis Presley.

The biopic is based on the 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me,” written by Priscilla Presley, but for the sake of the movie it was probably an inconvenience that the author remains alive and well. It’s almost impossible to faithfully adapt an autobiography and end up with a good movie, and “Priscilla” proves why. Everything Presley tries to protect — Elvis, her parents, herself — the movie also protects. Bound by these constraints, Coppola is left to hint in certain directions, but she can never commit. She ends up with a presentation of events that isn’t complex or multifaceted, but consistently and unsatisfyingly ambiguous.

它开始在美国陆军基地在德国,14-year-old Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) being approached by a soldier, who asks her if she is an Elvis Presley fan. It so happens that he is a friend of Elvis, while the already popular singer is doing his military service in Germany, and he wants to invite her to a party. Of course, she wants to go.

Creepy, right? What is this Elvis pal doing? Is he just generously extending an invitation, or is he pimping an underage girl for his rock star buddy?

Soon, Elvis and Priscilla develop an emotional connection (it’s not physical, yet) and Priscilla’s parents consistently give their permission for him to see her. A 24-year-old celebrity, famous for his gyrating pelvis, wants to date their 14-year-old daughter, and they let it happen. This is all borderline sick, but Coppola presents it with a studied blandness that seems partly her signature style and partly an effort to avoid offending the real Priscilla Presley.

Is this a movie about exploitation? Coppola doesn’t go there. Elvis takes drugs and has weird, explosive outbursts, but “Priscilla” isn’t a movie about drug abuse. Nor is it a movie about sexual perversity, even though Elvis turns Priscilla into a plastic-doll version of a woman, with false eyelashes, colorful dresses and elaborate dyed black hair.

The movie avoids comedy, as well, even though Elvis and Priscilla come across here as the intellectual equivalents of single-celled organisms. But then, at Graceland, they live in a paramecium habitat, surrounded by equally dimwitted family members and even stupider Elvis sycophants.

As Elvis, Jacob Elordi (HBO’s “Euphoria” and the forthcoming “Saltburn”) makes the most of an undefined role, but he’s a little too lanky to play the famously beefy Elvis of the early 1970s. But then, it hardly matters because Spaeny’s Priscilla is the movie’s entire focus.

Spaeny (“The Craft: Legacy”) does well throughout — especially in the early scenes, in which she subtly depicts a teenage girl’s barely controlled lust. But once the setting moves to Graceland and Priscilla moves in, the role becomes passive.

Elvis’ vision of marriage was that he would go off for months at a time and have sex with a series of co-stars and then come home to his clueless, virginal wife. “Priscilla” could be described as the story of how the virginal wife finally got a clue, but it takes her too long. We’re left with a movie that mostly consists of a confused woman-child stumbling around a mansion in high heels.

Reach Mick LaSalle: mlasalle@sfchronicle.com