After a much-anticipated wait (writes Eva Scates), Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis arrived at FILMS4TENBY at the much-loved DeValance.

At 6.30pm the doors opened, and once then a had found their seats (with freshly made popcorn from the bar).

It was cheering to learn that all proceeds went as a charitable donation back to the DeValance- to be spent on a bigger popcorn machine- or even as the organiser of the night put it: ‘new seats!’ The audience chuckled, but by the end of the two and a half hours- everyone knew what he meant!

I certainly was excited- all I had heard about Elvis was the records played once in a while at my grandparents’, or the image imprinted in every other young teenager’s mind: of a chubby, strung-out man in tight white suit, singing his sorrows away in Las Vegas.

But I could see from the atmosphere in the room that Elvis meant so much more than that to the another generation, and we all couldn’t wait to see how Luhrmann would interperate Elvis’s star-studded, confusing life.

It started at the end, not of Presley’s life, but of the life that dominated it: Elvis’s wicked manager Colonel Tom parker, played brilliantly (albeit grotesquely) by Tom Hanks. the cruel puppet master of the devastating performance that was Elvis’s life. Elvis was played by Austin Butler – he really caught the tragedy of being ‘caught in trap’. Butler is surely a contender for the Oscars next year…

By the end of the movie, you felt exhilarated and exhausted, trying to unpick everything you had just seen, although, that probably means the film did something right.

There is now someone from a new generation who is an Elvis fan – I want to listen to more of the King’s songs.

Thank you FILMS4TENBY!