As in an amusement park, the spectator does not see the 2h39 of the feature film by Australian Baz Luhrmann pass.

The disheveled editing and the explosion of colors, signatures of the filmmaker of "Moulin rouge", disconcert in the first scenes.

Before the charging pace made sense.

Showbiz is a washer and the "Love Me Tender" singer ended up wrung out, dying at age 42 in 1977.

American Austin Butler, 30, brilliantly takes up the challenge of embodying the "King" for two decades.

With a sacred performance: it is his voice that we hear in the sequences where Presley sings.

"I had this unrealistic urge to have the same face as him (laughs), I looked at myself in the mirror wondering how to do it, then I freed myself from this thought, which allowed me to strip the icon to go towards the human", he told in May in front of journalists in Cannes, where the film was screened out of competition.

The Californian, also a model, appeared in Disney series or even in the cinema in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" by Quentin Tarantino, is stunning in the reproduction of concerts in 1970 in a Las Vegas palace.

Just compare it with "Elvis: That's The Way It Is", a documentary made that year by American Denis Sanders.

American actor Austin Butler, on May 31, 2022 in London JUSTIN TALLIS AFP/Archives

Presley was then 35 years old and it was already yet another revival of his career, successful this time.

He only has seven years to live but is still in good shape, far from being overweight, with a puffy face under the influence of alcohol and medication.

manipulative manager

Because the dazzling trajectory of the musician from Mississippi was not linear, which the biopic traces well.

The beginning looks like a fairy tale when Colonel Parker, a manager from the circus who manages country stars, spots this "white kid who sings like a black man", as the film renders him.

The impresario relies on this born showman who puts spectators in a trance, long before the Beatles or the Rolling Stones.

Tom Hanks, made up, aging his voice, artificially weighted with the pachydermic silhouette of Colonel Parker, delivers a performance that Americans love.

He excels as a manipulator for whom "show must go on" and the coffers must be filled.

Who will offer the best and the worst to his foal.

(gd) American actors Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and Australian director Baz Luhrmann, before the screening of the film "Elvis", May 25, 2022 at the Cannes Film Festival CHRISTOPHE SIMON AFP/Archives

Austin Butler shines as a young Elvis with his first successes, bristling with his swaying hips in the puritan America of the 1950s. And who quickly sees his illusions shattered by a cynical music industry.

Episodes unknown to the general public are well exploited in the biopic.

Forced to sing with a dog in a TV show, Parker's bad idea, Elvis pays him back by appearing all dressed in black leather for a Christmas TV show, far from snowman sweaters.

The film is not free from faults -- bombastic scenes of Elvis as a child discovering black American music -- but hides nothing of a life in the whirlwind of "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll".

© 2022 AFP