Elenya (1992) User Reviews

Interesting idea and good low budget movie.

[toneandgroove · 7/10 · 17 November 2017]

I thought this was a pretty fair movie, particularly given it was clearly a low budget affair: A young girl loses the adored company and companionship of her father and as her ¨luck¨ will have it, has him replaced by a wounded German airman.

The whole shebang was bound to end in tears of course and sad to say the airman's demise is at the hands of ignorant locals. But who can blame ignorant locals for being ignorant? Only real criticism is why the dogs were let loose when he was already in he river. A little more thought as to how he could have been caught wouldn't have gone amiss. The boys after all had already found out about his existence. A more perceptive ending could have been achieved in my opinion. Nice touches in the scenes where the two main actors clearly don't understand each others language.

Slow boring and pretentious

[malcolmgsw · 3/10 · 22 January 2021]

This film was co produced by the BFI so the above description is par for the course for their films Difficult to make 80 minutes go slowly but this manages to achieve this effortlessly.The modern sequence seems to have very little relevance.

Entertaining yarn, with a superb performance from Ed Jones

[carlisleutdfan · 10/10 · 22 February 2001]

Elenya (Delafouge Jones) is a girl of Italian descent living during WWII in a backwards village in deepest, darkest Wales. Tormented by her school friends and neglected by her parents, Elenya is an outcast and she regresses in to a self-enforced state of social exclusion. However, during a solitary walk in the welsh countryside, she stumbles upon a downed German Airman (Behrendt) whom she helps and befriends. Gough's film starts slowly and the retrospective narration offered by the elderly Elenya adds nothing to the film. However, where the film truely shows its depth and strength is in the relationship between Elenya and her school friends. Wyn Jones is unconvincing as Elenya's sole friend (also made a social Pariah due to his terrible weight problem), but newcomer Edward Jones (criminally uncredited above) is sensational as the archetypal school bully. Jones shows the ferocity of a Joe Pesci, the aimlessness of a mean streets De Niro and the sex appeal of a pre-fight Mickey Rourke, and steals the show away from under the noses of Delafouge and Wyn Jones. If he can overcome the hindrances of his physical deformities, I believe Jones could have a great future in motion pictures. Behrendt is adequate as the German airman, and Gough deals with the relationship between the helpless airman and the young girl sensitively and with finesse. In the event however, he shys away from developing the sexual tension between the two to any more than a vague sideline, and their is no nudity of any kind in the film; a definite zero on the nork-ometer. Elenya is a good example of what is wrong with Welsh cinema: it's not very good. My rating: ********************** 22 stars (worth a look)