Gone with the Wind. When Harry Met Sally. The English Patient. While these are all great love stories, I have to ask: is ANYONE's life really like that? Here we have a film that's just as cinematically powerful, and yet it tells a love story which most of us have probably experienced. Plain & simple, this is the story of a missed encounter revisited years later. Based on director José Luis Guerín's real life experience, this is the story of an artist who meets a girl and, years later, returns to the city where they met. He has only a handful of clues as to who she is or where she may be: a cocktail napkin with a map drawn on it, a box of matches, and a vague recollection of what she looked like.What follows is a very poetic 80 minutes of people watching. He sees girls who look like her but he's not sure, so he scrutinizes them from a distance, draws them, on occasion follows them or tries to strike up a conversation. Wow, that sounds sorta creepy. But it's not. That's largely due to the lead actor's innocent boyish looks--the kind where he could stare at you for 10 minutes and you never feel threatened. He is purely an observer, and for anyone who has always wanted to indulge in people-watching but never dared for fear of being arrested, "In the City of Sylvia" is a real treat.One thing to bear in mind is that this is a very motionless story. I mean that literally as well as figuratively. Camera shots are very still and lingering while the plot is equally slow. So if you're looking for a typical Hollywood love story you shouldn't even bother with this. But if the phrase "a picture is worth 1,000 words" means anything to you, then this is worth checking out.Like I said in the beginning, this is a love story we've all been through, whether literally or in our whimsical reveries. All of us have that certain stranger burned into our brain from years ago: someone at a bus stop, the person you sat behind in junior high, the checkout person at a grocery store whom you had a momentary soul connection with. Wouldn't it be interesting to try to find them years later? Or is it best left idealized in our nostalgic memory? One way or another, it's this sort of mysterious longing that embodies the essence of romance. I'm grateful to director José Luis Guerín for showing us the beauty in it.

After arriving at a city, an artist waits at an outdoor café and anticipates Sylvia's appearance. He then proceeds to follow a girl, but it turns out to be a mistake.Without much dialogue or dramatic genuflections, viewers may find that José Luis Guerin's latest film takes some time to absorb. Pushing the clichéd man searching for woman narrative aside it is possible to interpret the film from several view points. It is an abstract film about Strasbourg (almost unidentifiable as several languages are heard), it is about observing women (mediated through the male gaze), and may also be seen as simply tracing an obsession.The title is somewhat misleading as Sylvia remains absent and emerges only as an image (a combination of all the women "elles" the man has sketched) throughout the film. Even the subheadings (the first, second, and third night) are ambiguous as most scenes happen during the daytime. Yet the three parts are ingeniously linked by the café waitress with slightly different but highly related scenes. The ending in which the man follows the waitress suggests a continuation of his romantic search. The narrative ambiguities are successfully compensated by Guerin's reinvention of cinema as a tool to record and provide a vision beyond one's naked eye. Other details, such as the repetitions (the same graffiti and wallet peddler, even the girl's gesture resembles the advertisement model's), sound effects (the woman's footsteps), and use of off-screen space further generate pleasure for perceptive viewers of this light piece.

How someone loved ALL of this movie, I cannot comprehend. It started off just strangely and slowly enough to captivate the audience. The middle of the movie was a bit long, drawn out, too self glorifying for words, and excessively contrived. But, I gave it a chance. Me, the most impatient person :)So, I sat there, only made a few snide, whispered remarks and continued to wait for the amazing ending that would bring the whole movie together and make me have at least a lilliputian epiphany. Needless to say, that semi interesting or even minimally boring ending did not come. Instead, the movie that had an amazing understanding of people, their emotions and how they express them, sometimes unwittingly, everywhere they go forgot to actually finish. The movie could have been amazing. The director could have done so much. So much more with it. But they did not, and what a waste. Which is why it is in the movie trash category that all independent movies without the last third go to. Too bad. Watch it, it is worth watching, but know to not expect much out of this sadly massacred film.

I watched this film at the Toronto International Film Festival this past September, and I loved it. I woke up the following morning, and still thought about the film.The film entrances the audience, as it turns us into the main character - it turns us into voyeurs. Although, watching films is a voyeuristic process, this film turns us into voyeurs, in the literal sense. We find ourselves spying on these women, the way the protagonist does - and we find ourselves searching for Sylvia…Although 84 minutes long, there are only 3 - 4 lines of dialog, otherwise, be prepared for a lot of foot steps. I'd recommend it if you liked "Triplettes de Belleville."