81
Metascore
9 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlVillage VoiceAlan ScherstuhlA pained and gorgeous summoning, Petra Costa's haunted doc Elena dances with death, memory, and family, seducing viewers and then breaking their hearts.
- 91IndieWireIndieWireShot like a dream, spoken like an elegy, it takes nonfiction where it seldom wants to go – away from the comforting embrace of fact and into a realm of expressionistic possibility.
- 91The PlaylistKatie WalshThe PlaylistKatie WalshThis is avant-garde autobiographical filmmaking at its finest, and the results are stunningly beautiful, and achingly emotional within a lyrical and dreamlike aesthetic.
- 90The Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckThe Hollywood ReporterFrank ScheckElena is an elegiac cinematic essay that is both haunting and unforgettable.
- 80The New York TimesStephen HoldenThe New York TimesStephen HoldenWith its free-floating imagery, Elena unfolds like a cinematic dream whose central image is water, which symbolizes the washing away of grief. But more than that, it represents the stream of life, with beautiful images of women floating through time.
- 80Los Angeles TimesSheri LindenLos Angeles TimesSheri LindenThe result is a type of cinematic performance art, with all the self-consciousness that suggests — a sibling love story that's no less heartfelt for being in the form of a first-person poem.
- 75Slant MagazineDiego SemereneSlant MagazineDiego SemereneThis is a film about the invisible things passed down from generation to generation, that nasty inheritance that cages us into patterns and puzzles we try to solve in someone else's name.
- Elena is at once a portrait, an autobiography and a history of family trauma.
- 63RogerEbert.comChristy LemireRogerEbert.comChristy LemireIntimate and impressionistic but ultimately a little self-indulgent.