In the City of Sylvia

This film made me feel like I had just undertaken a short vacation to a European city and returned. I basked in the splendour of visuals, sound and delightful observations of the city, its sounds and its people, particularly the young women, going about doing their thing. It made me smile, laugh and delighted me to simply observe.

I sincerely believe that it is extremely difficult for directors to make a good mood piece which keeps the viewer interested and does not lull him/her to sleep. Very few directors have this ability and I was thrilled to have experienced the keen sense of observation of the director of this film. I think I can actually count the total number of dialogues on my fingertips. There is a story in the background, but it is really not important to this film.

So before watching this, remember that you will be observing a piece of art in motion and not a movie with a particular story. This is how I believe cinema was supposed to be when it first was invented over a 120 years ago - as a medium of art in motion, and not for storytelling as it has been diluted to over the past century.

So, brilliant job, director, for you have realised the true meaning of cinema and have delivered us an excellent piece for the years to come. I sincerely hope I see more work from you heading into this direction in the future.

This movie is set in a very sun-drenched francophone city, which didn't remind me of anywhere particular (though apparently it was Strasbourg). From my perspective it's the city of youth, and that's why the sun is always shining. The story concerns a young man with no name, played by Xavier Lafitte (eye candy for androphiles methinks), who I will henceforth refer to as X. He's this very bohemian looking youth who walks around in a white canvas suit and hangs out in front of a conservatory where he likes to sit with a beer and draw the lounging gazelles of the school.

He does a lot of observing and sketching, seemingly unhappy with some of his drawings, and then he sees a woman inside the café (called Sylvie) who he is mesmerised by. When she leaves he follows her, all over the city in fact, and even draws a map of where he's been afterwards. Along the way we see all sorts of uncanny shots, phantom images coming to life in tram windows and then disappearing, an obese tramp lolling around, a habitual trinket-seller, beautiful women. Everywhere there seems to be the same graffito, "Laure, je t'aime".

The most fetishistic shot is when X is outside Sylvie's apartment and her dress is slightly billowing in the wind, hung outside to dry presumably. Rene Magritte being saluted there I feel. Little blusters of wind are important in this film, we see X's sketchbook/journal having it's pages caressed by the wind quite a lot, in one shot this is used to show us a fragmentary look back at everything X has experienced, it's like reading his memory really (an awesome shot).

In another memorable shot we see a woman with long hair from behind having the outer hairs being blown up in a kind of halo (halos are another motif in this film, this woman he's following who may or may not be called Sylvie stands in front of a church at one point, with her head in the centre of a circular device on the church facade).

So the sound is also very heightened in the city of Sylvia. Somehow they've managed to portray in this film the way that sound carries on a hot summer day, many congratulations to the sound guys. You here all the little sounds, of cutlery, the clip clop of shoes etc. Makes for a very vividly real feeling.

X is following this woman throughout the movie, that's the movie, pretty much dialogue free. At night we see these crazy shots of his darkened bedroom with strange light plays caused by passing cars by, this feels like Guerin is coming at you with a knife after all the sunlit scenes that this movie is dominated by.

This is the 21st century's Last Year At Marienbad, and plays on the same themes of memory, and also the will to love.

OK so I forgot to mention there is this goth looking woman in the bar Les Aviateurs at one point, with red ribbons in her hair, goddamn she looked awesome.

Guerin should have either won at Veince (he was nominated) or have been brutally murdered for making this film. There's really something desperately nasty under the surface, that makes me shudder, even with all the beauty.

It is about time that we stop using the term "voyeur" to describe every film where the audience is given an opportunity to gaze at women. There is so much else in addition to the gazing, observing, and following. What the film captures is the harmony between the observer and the environment: a total immersion in its atmosphere. In an era where portable audio devices eliminate people's attention to their surroundings, the film almost feels like a timely persuasion: watch what you see, and listen to what you hear. Remember the essence of cinema: sound, images, and movements. The film also bears a sign of timelessness through its universal theme: a romantic's pursuit of his dreams in la vie quotidienne. As an ostensibly subjective film, it also includes many mysterious scenes where the identify of the observer is ambiguous. Some people think that those scenes come from the imagination of our protagonist - or could it be the filmmaker, or the viewer? This movie is nothing less than a timely and timeless masterpiece. It provides compelling evidence that cinema is far from dying; as a matter of fact, it has hardly been as exciting and alive.

Gone with the Wind. When Harry Met Sally. The English Patient. While these are all great love stories, I have to ask: is ANYONE's life really like that? Here we have a film that's just as cinematically powerful, and yet it tells a love story which most of us have probably experienced. Plain & simple, this is the story of a missed encounter revisited years later. Based on director José Luis Guerín's real life experience, this is the story of an artist who meets a girl and, years later, returns to the city where they met. He has only a handful of clues as to who she is or where she may be: a cocktail napkin with a map drawn on it, a box of matches, and a vague recollection of what she looked like.

What follows is a very poetic 80 minutes of people-watching. He sees girls who look like her but he's not sure, so he scrutinizes them from a distance, draws them, on occasion follows them or tries to strike up a conversation. Wow, that sounds sorta creepy. But it's not. That's largely due to the lead actor's innocent boyish looks--the kind where he could stare at you for 10 minutes and you never feel threatened. He is purely an observer, and for anyone who has always wanted to indulge in people-watching but never dared for fear of being arrested, "In the City of Sylvia" is a real treat.

One thing to bear in mind is that this is a very motionless story. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. Camera shots are very still and lingering while the plot is equally slow. So if you're looking for a typical Hollywood love story you shouldn't even bother with this. But if the phrase "a picture is worth 1,000 words" means anything to you, then this is worth checking out.

Like I said in the beginning, this is a love story we've all been through, whether literally or in our whimsical reveries. All of us have that certain stranger burned into our brain from years ago: someone at a bus stop, the person you sat behind in junior high, the checkout person at a grocery store whom you had a momentary soul connection with. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to find them years later? Or is it best left idealized in our nostalgic memory? One way or another, it's this sort of mysterious longing that embodies the essence of romance. I'm grateful to director José Luis Guerín for showing us the beauty in it.

Film as art, without a doubt. But I did not find it at all inaccessible or pretentious. Its in fact a warmly human film, not at all aloof, but a celebratory and generous hearted piece which meditates on themes like desire, beauty and the silent interaction of society. It achieves this through truly wonderful use of natural light and ambient street sounds whilst the film is framed and sequenced in a thoughtful, dedicated way. And the unobtrusive cast underplay to let the director's vision shine.

It will not be to everyone's taste but I was hypnotized by this film, and deeply impressed by the purity of the film-makers' achievements here. Difficult to judge in terms of what has gone before, so I hope this film will establish a reputation as a stand-alone piece or even a ground-breaker in the coming years. Though unique in my experience, it also seems a natural next step in European cinema's long history of meandering, loosely-plotted films that are about atmosphere and everyday emotions rather than life-changing events.