In the City of Sylvia **** , by Peter Bradshaw. The Guardian - Friday 13th March 2009

By Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian - Friday 13th March 2009 ****

(...) It has a Bressonian attention to mood and moment, wierdly combined with Alfres Hitchcock's brazen knack for suspense.

(...) In the City of Sylvia reminds you that most cinema discourages you from looking, really looking. (...) People who would otherwise be beneath your notice as crowd-scene extras, start to become familiar: you see them from different angles, in different scenes, in different streets. You notice them, and this act of noticing - like the man's hyper-alert sensitivity to news of Sylvia - is a jab to your solipsism.

(...)

Guerin appears to have lit their (Xavier Lafitte and Pilar Lopez de Ayala) faces with something more than daylight to produce that artificial, studio feel: Strasbourg suddenly looks more like a back-projection. I was actually on th eedge of my seat for this exchange; it sounds absurd, I know, and of course the whole film is vulnerable to mockery, but I found it genuinely gripping in its pure normality.

(...)

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