Northwest Film Forum

José Luis Guerín nimbly brings moviemaking and moviegoing back to some of their lovely early pleasures in his masterful In the City of Sylvia. He is so successful at modernizing and rarefing these elements that it forces one to reconsider the dialogue and special effects in other films as clutter. In the City of Sylvia is an everyday, yet sublime, vision, one so exquisite you’d think that everything Guerín looks at—the city of Strasbourg, its flaneurs and shops, even the sun that shines on it-was created for the loving gaze of his camera. The story also evokes the most blessed moments of a New Wave work like Agnès Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7. During a few languid summer days, a young foreigner spends his afternoons sketching in an outdoor café. He is looking for a woman named Sylvia who he’d met years before in the same city. He is also sketching the many attractive young women he sees everywhere, any one of whom could be her. Then one afternoon, thinking he’s actually seen her, he sets off through the city to confront his memory. Guerín’s graceful work eloquently captures the feeling of being in love with love, and the youthful sense of a world filled with an almost limitless sensuality.