En la ciudad de Sylvia (2007)

Director:

José Luis Guerín

Writer:

José Luis Guerín (writer)

Release Date:

14 September 2007 (Spain)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A man returns to a city to try to track down a lovely woman he met six years earlier. |

Plot Keywords:

Pursuit | Sketching | Street

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

Pilar López de Ayala	...	Ella
Xavier Lafitte	...	Él
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Michaël Balerdi	...	Un passant
Laurence Cordier
Tanja Czichy	...	Tanja
Gladys Deussner	...	Woman reading a book
Eric Dietrich
Charlotte Dupont
Philippe Ohrel	...	The strange man

Also Known As:

In the City of Sylvia (Europe: English title) (festival title) (USA) (new title)
Dans la ville de Sylvia (France)

Runtime:

Canada:84 min (Toronto International Film Festival)

Country:

Spain | France

Language:

French | Spanish

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Ireland:G

Filming Locations:

Café du TNS-Théatre National de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France

Company:

Eddie Saeta S.A.

Soundtrack:

Style

Loose docufiction whimsy

I am loathe to say this as I rather enjoyed having a proxy version of my favourite (London) past time - watching people. However, this is a misconceived, ill-constructed film which makes a palindromic attempt to inflate a document of urban life whilst deconstructing a (half-baked) thriller.

The film is three acted (three 'nights'). In the first a man watches girls. In the second he follows one. In the third he watches them again, although there's a suggestion that he may have acted on what he's learnt from the first two. The film's merits are largely to do with the unimpeachably youthful beauty of the principals, although Michaël Balerdi, the young man, is a distractingly weak actor. As I mentioned I also liked the nicely photographed corners of Strasbourg and the drama inherent in the smattering of tracking shots...

... alas, these tracking shots are mucky, inconsistently rendered (an un-steadycam?). The continuity errors are glaring. I was also easily off-put by boom mic intrusion and imperfections on the print, as well as hopelessly rendered foley sound (really bad!).

The worst thing - and this is no one's fault - is that once the 'pursuit' gets going, the film immediately looks like the opening sequence of Michael Haneke's Caché. If you even begin to compare these similarly themed films Guerin's piece begins to look very clumsy indeed. 3/10