FILMS/
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA
En la ciudad de Sylvia
Tributes
Spain, 2007, 84 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Sun, Apr 27 / 6:00 / Kabuki / AWAR27K
Tue, Apr 29 / 4:00 / Kabuki / INTH29K
Fri, May 2 / 9:00 / Kabuki / INTH02K
CREDITS
- dir
-
José Luis Guerín
- prod
-
Luis Miñarro, Gaëlle Jones
- scr
-
José Luis Guerín
- cam
-
Natasha Braier
- editor
-
Núria Esquerra
- cast
-
Pilar López de Ayala, Xavier Lafitte, Laurence Cordier, Tania Czichy
- source
-
Eddie Saeta, Pasaje Permanyer, 14, 08009 Barcelona, Spain. FAX: 34.93.467.74.89. EMAIL: eddie@eddiesaeta.com
The play of light and shadow across a wall, a boy searching for a girl, the joined yet discrete fates of strangers on a tram—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 so successfully modernizes and rarefies these elements that it forces one to reconsider the dialogue and special effects on display in other films as so much clutter. This is a field recording that reawakens your ears. It’s also 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. A young man (Xavier Lafitte) puzzles over and searches for Sylvia, the would-be sweetheart he remembers from an encounter six years ago. During a bravura sequence at an outdoor café, the young man sits and sketches amid tables buzzing with conversation, as women’s faces—some seen directly, others reflected through glass—dominate several planes of vision. When one dark-haired woman (Pilar López de Ayala) gets up and leaves, the young man follows her. And we follow him, as his journey passes through a cobbled labyrinth of alleys and streets and eventually into a nightclub’s heart of glass, where it all began.
—Johnny Ray Huston
Sponsored by Dolby Laboratories. Selected and introduced by 2008 Mel Novikoff Award recipient J. Hoberman.
