Pretty knackered in the lounge of the Picture House, I contemplate whether I should see this or not. On my twitter feed @filmstalker warns me to avoid it. I leave a message asking why and go in anyway. The curtain opens, the film begins, or does it?
In the City of Sylvia'
En la ciudad de Sylvia
Runtime: 84 minutesLanguage: French (with English subtitles)
Release: September 14th (in Spain - UK Release Unknown)
Written & Directed by: José Luis Guerín
Plot Outline:
A young man (Xavier Lafitte) arrives in Strasbourg and spends his days sitting at an outdoor café, sketching the figures of the women around him, patiently waiting for Sylvia, the woman that he fell in love with six years earlier, to appear.
He finally thinks he sees her in Ella (Pilar López de Ayala) and gives chase, but it turns out to be someone else. He resumes his quest for his lost love and the innocence he longs to regain. Sylvia's presence lingers, but it is impossible to return to the past.
Overall Impressions:
So, as I was saying above Mr. FilmStalker warned me about this. The film had begun but appeared to be very still. The guy in it was pencilling something. A couple of minutes later, things begin to kick off. Well, I say that but there was a lot of still camera following certain angles of streets.
All of this said & done, it didn't annoy me as much as it did others. It was a slice of life in some respects. Now this may be partly just due to how exhausted I was at this point, I was kind of thankful I was watching something where I could switch my brain to auto, since not much substantial was happening.
It was kind of like hanging about outdoors & something catching your interest. When you have no other intent / anything better to do, you can easily get engaged by your ongoings. A little like when I'm at the Cafe & am side-tracked from doing any work, I just observe, make notes of things that has a potential story I could write around it. So yea, as a film it's a bit redundant, but I didn't hate it.
It did have some sort of structure. The 3 acts were panned out as 3 days of this guys life. Day 1 we see what he does, Day 2 he meets pursues potential Sylvia & Day 3 he moves on. Picking at something Rich stated incorrectly: "Eventually he speaks to her, finds she's not who she thought she was, and heads off. That night he gets drunk, laid, and goes about sketching people again."
I think this is where I saw & felt some sort of resolution in the story which I found acceptable that he didn't. After he speaks to her & finds she's not who she thought she was, he gets drunk, even laid, but the next day his attitude has changed. He looks through his sketches, looks at all these potential women that might be Sylvia & doesn't approach any of them, or sketch any more.
It might just be me but I also think that it's to be taken away that the women may actually have been Sylvia, but has moved on & basically he realises this & is coming to terms with it, moving on.
If you expected any more than observation, you would be disappointed & since I know people mostly seek entertainment from film I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but I personally didn't hate it.
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