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In the City of Sylvia (2007)

Director: José Luis Guerín

Time Out rating

Average user rating

12 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

The foolhardy attempts of a bookish lothario to stoke the fires of his fading memory are captured with mad invention in this unusual film from Catalan iconoclast José Luis Guerín.

The serene plazas and back alleys of Strasbourg are the hunting ground for Xavier Lafitte’s Él, a young artist who has taken to trailing beautiful women around the city in the hope of locating an old flame called Sylvia. What at first feels like a fractured, experimental and slightly seedy mood piece on male perspective and fantasy blossoms into a meditation on desire and becomes something both profound and logical.

That it works is in no small part due to Guerín’s sterling work behind the camera. A rambling set-up leads to a surprisingly gripping mid-section as he pursues Pilar López de Ayala’s Ella through the streets. Every frame is calculated to develop the film’s dense framework of literary, artistic and film references – with particular reverence set aside for Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ – as well as delivering a credible recreation of the urban experience with the help of rhythmic editing and detailed sound design. The use of recurring shots and motifs, as well as a penchant for lingering on the pensive faces of mainly female passers-by, all hint that Guerín sees this as a single thread in a much bigger and even more wildly coloured tapestry.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London issue 2012, Mar 12-18 2009

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User reviews of this film

Gerry said...

Posted on Sep 14 2009 13:18 This film is on a par with Antonioni's L'Avventura and Zurlini's Cronaca Familiare, films I have watched many
times. I will see Sylvia again and again.
Xavier Lafitte, with almost no dialogue, did an
extraordinary job of sustaining one's interest from
beginning to end. Few actors would have managed this. Perhaps Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson. Of the younger generation of actors I cannot think of any.

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Will said...

Posted on Jul 11 2009 23:14 Apologies, I realise that my last comment was unnecessarily personal and biting.
But the film is still wonderful.
If it didn't resonate with some people on a tonal level or otherwise, then that's fine, but there's really no excuse for narrow-mindedness.

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Will said...

Posted on Jul 11 2009 22:33 "slow editing is not synonymous with substance", nor is literalism.
Ludbrook, your inability see beyond character in its most vapid sense is "pathetic", Xavier Lafitte's flaneur/viewer-construct certainly isn't.
I could go on and actually review the film, but I'm afraid that the dearth of imagination suffered by this site's blander (and, almost certainly, balder) viewers maybe complemented by an equally moronic stubbornness.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Apr 24 2009 13:22 I saw this for a second time last week. I wouldn't say that it's The Best film I've ever seen, if only because there are others that I am more fond of. However, I don't think I've ever seen a better film than this. It's full of human incident and mystery, ambiguity. There are strong emotional repsonses triggered by the behaviour of the central figure, at least, and simply lovely portraiture, still life compositions, and repeatedly beautiful observations of objects moved by the wind - most enchantingly a dress hung on a upstairs balcony and the hair of young women being caught and cast as they stand at a tram stop. It's a sublime film. Entirely unpretentious and as diversely rewarding as any film I've ever seen.

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Ian said...

Posted on Mar 24 2009 12:22 I saw the film as a result of your 5 star rating. Your reviewer must be a shareholder at the Curzon or a relative of the film's Director. A really awful film and a gross indulgence by the Director.

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Mar 23 2009 13:31 See below, breathless reader ...

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Mar 23 2009 13:29 A very strong film, I thought. Only about a dozen lines of dialogue between the 2 sole speakers and little or no event. A mournful, frustrated and perhaps disturbed young man spends 3 days in a sunlit city, apparently looking for someone he met 6 years before. His looking seems substantially to be passive but he does spend a long afternoon following a girl who he believes to be his quarry. Eventually, he speaks to her and she, a stranger, rejects him and his unpleasant behaviour. It is a sort of clueless mystery story - what happened?, who was She?, who is he? In the meanwhile, especially during the cafe scenes where he watches and sketches the other customers, there is some striking portraiture by the camera. I hadn't expected much but found myself offered a good deal but requires passive patience on your part.

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oscar said...

Posted on Mar 21 2009 17:27 Our hero looks destined to end up as a shampoo model, his only ‘talent’ is his having long dishevelled hair and and a vacuous expression. He spends his days in cafes drawing beautiful girls, he isn’t very good at this (THIS TAKES UP THE FIRST HOUR OF THE FILM), he then decides to follow one girl across town (THIS TAKES UP THE NEXT HALF HOUR)...
Then we left, this is a truly awful example of French cinema at its pretentious worst... don’t go, whatever you do, utter tosh...

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helen said...

Posted on Mar 19 2009 10:52 Dear God, what a completely vapid film, devoid of content or form. What the director is saying could at best provide substance for a short, but falls short of meriting anything feature length. What offended me most was the stench of pretension that pervaded the film: slow editing is not synonymous with substance, and if the director has nothing to say, a painfully slow pace will not fill this void. I am used to watching films where nothing interesting happens, but when nothing happens in an utterly uninteresting way, you know you’re in for a hellish two hours. This is art house masturbation at its worst.

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P. Ludbrook said...

Posted on Mar 17 2009 18:09 The most overrated film to appear so far this year. The travails of this pathetic obsessive were not gripping, funny or touching. Best things about the movie were Strasbourg, the photography and the sound design. By the end I wanted two men in white coats to take him somewhere for therapy.

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marek said...

Posted on Mar 16 2009 01:32 Stunning indeed!?! Pleeease! An incredibly slow paced film (think of paint drying) and more suited for the turbine room of Tate Modern (which is giving it more credit than it is due). It really is lacking in so many ways ... and is more a cinematic tourist brochure for Strasbourg. The plot is wafer-thin and though I like art-house films, there is really the emperors new clothes. Unfortunately nothing new or exciting.

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H. Parker said...

Posted on Mar 10 2009 12:56 Stunning! The most beautiful film I've seen in years. this is a must see and a director to watch. I can't wait for the DVD and extras.

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