Dans la ville de Sylvia

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.

It is one of the most written about and blogged about films of the last few years.References abound,from Bresson to Hitchcock,Rohmer,Murnau,even Dante and Petrarch,but is it too slender to sustain such a formidable weight of cultural allusions? While it is undoubtedly true that it is reminiscent of many other films,there is something sufficiently fresh and different which makes it definitely stand out. The story could not be more simple.A dreamy looking young man waits alone in a café in Strasbourg scanning each female passer by in the hope that she may be Sylvia whom he met in the city six years ago.Eventually he sees someone who may be her and he begins to obsessively pursue her through a labyrinth of streets and alleyways.Yes, "Vertigo" is of course brought to mind and there is a wealth of allusions to the feminist theory of the controlling power of the male gaze.But there is more to it than that.The ditching of much narrative,characterisation and even dialogue give rise to a new form of cinema experience,a concentration on the purely sensuous aspect of cinema,an increased awareness of the power of everyday sights and sounds which cinema usually elides in favour of a forward thrusting narrative and a well-defined protagonist.

well, many of the people above me wrote that the movie was bad, but I actually really enjoyed it. I watched it in the Jerusalem Film Festival, and to be honest, one of the best movies I have seen. why? first of all, the cinematography is amazing. they have in most of the shots beautiful views, and interesting ways to film. second of all, the sound was VERY well made, and basically, those are the two main factors that make this movie a good movie. I think that you have MAX 100-200 words in the whole movie, and it is more of an artistic film, without really a very complex story to tell...

I enjoyed it a lot, and I recommend it to Cinema lovers, because of its complex and interesting ways of film, and the wonderful soundtrack. if you are going to just "watch a movie"don't go because you will get bored.

I watched this film at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, and I loved it. I woke up the following morning, and still thought about the film.

The film entrances the audience, as it turns us into the main character - it turns us into voyeurs. Although, watching films is a voyeuristic process, this film turns us into voyeurs, in the literal sense. We find ourselves spying on these women, the way the protagonist does - and we find ourselves searching for Sylvia…

Although 84 minutes long, there are only 3 - 4 lines of dialog, otherwise, be prepared for a lot of foot steps. I'd recommend it if you liked "Triplettes de Belleville."

This film is simply a disgrace. It looks like it's been shot by an art student fascinated by women to the point that he thinks the viewer can actually SHARE his fascination because he relentlessly points his camera to these women. Ha ha ! No it doesn't work like that !!!

Everything in this film is just plain fake, like the way extras are being used : one of every race, one of every color, one of every nationality, one of every age... to make a point about Strasbourg being the epitome of the modern pan-cultural city. Every time I saw (and I had TIME to look at them) an extra crossing the screen, I could only but imagine the first assistant director saying, behind the camera : "Old lady with bags, go now ! Crippled Indian flower seller, walk faster ! Pretty brunette with the black skirt, look more dreamy !" All the "good" intentions of the director (seeing people through windows, or reflected on tramways, so as to show the distance between the main character and the people that surround him) are so underlined, so obvious, so pathetically childish that the whole film slowly becomes an obvious piece of I'm-so-arty-I-could-die piece of dung. Then of course, you show this film to someone who's used to blockbusters, he'll walk into another dimension right away. Like "What ? This can be cinema too ?" Happy may be the innocent. But for an art film lover like me, this is precisely the sort of "artsy trap movie" I'm certainly not gonna fall into. Oh and by the way mister Guerin, flower sellers don't roam the streets IN THE MORNING (as a matter of fact, restaurants are closed) Whatever anyway.