In the City of Sylvia

"Pure pleasure and pure cinema."—J. Hoberman, Village Voice

The story of Spanish director José Luis Guerín's exquisite In the City of Sylvia couldn't be more simple: a young, romantic man arrives in Strasbourg to look for a woman named Sylvia whom he had met there years before. The action of the film consists of the man's journeys through the city's streets, cafés, and nightclubs and his encounter with a woman who might match up with his memory of Sylvia. But the refined pleasures that the film provides come from the sublime sense of observation and sensuous filmmaking that Guerín employs. The audience, like the protagonist, becomes the explorer of a city filled with love, life, beauty, memories, and the ghosts of cinema history (the film recalls F. W. Murnau's Sunrise, Jacques Tati's Playtime, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, and countless points in-between). (85 mins., 35mm)

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