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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.

(...)

Read the article on guardian.co.uk

IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA, release in UK

"In the City of Sylvia" from MARCH 13th 2009.

Axiom Films distributes the film. 

More informations ? Check on the web site… click here

In the City of Sylvia - Interview at RFI, sept.11th.

By Julio FEO, at Radio France International.

Listen to the interview live of Xavier Lafitte CLICK HERE

In the City of Sylvia in DVD

In the City of Sylvia has been released in dvd in march 2008.

Find an article from Cinemania, march 2008.

IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA / Variety, May 15th, by Jonathan Holland

A young romantic trails a gamine around Strasbourg in "In the City of Sylvia" a finely tuned meditation on looking and longing in which auteur Jose Luis Guerin brings the same keen attention to romantic frustration he brought to urban change in 2001's "Under Construction". Pic is an airy, ultra-Galic delight whose apparent weightlessness is anchored by real substance. Largely dialogue-free, this is the kind of rarefied romance that should garner a select coterie of dedicated fest and arthouse followers, who'll find their own cinematic voyeurism reflected in the anxious gaze of its protag.

Said brokenheart (elfin-featured, flaxen-haired Xavier Lafitte) sits in a shabby hotel room, staring lengthily into space before starting to make sketches. He leaves and heads through the streets to a sidewalk cafe where he spends more time woman-watching and sketching. A bird defecates on his sketchpad; a waitress spills coffee.

Then, through glass, he sees Sylvia (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) and follows her, in real time, and with increasing agitation, trough the streets of Strasbourg. Her phone rings; he loses her for a while, but a little later, he spies her getting onto a streetcar and finally confronts her to ask whether she remembers meeting him in a club six years ago.

After an awkward conversation - speech comes as a crude intrusion on the silence - she gives her reply. All this has taken close to an hour: The heated five-minute exchange between them is pic's only dialogue.

Helmer, apparently on a quest to remake the visual language of docus for fiction, uses many of the same lensing techniques as in "Under Construction" - often lengthly takes, apparently random, but actually precision-engineered - except that this time, we know who's watching.

Protag's quest has him staring almost pathologically at the (most beautiful) women who might be Sylvia.

Sometimes they caych his eye and turn away, but more often they are unaware. The complex dynamics of human love relationships are suggested by this elegant visual shorthand.

Dramatically stranded between the desire and the act, the omnipresent Lafitte, whose feyness makes Johnny Depp look like Tommy Lee Jones, might as well have "lovelorn romantic" tattooed on his forehead.

It may be hard to identify with the kind of nerd who obsesses widly over a six-year-old fling, but Lafitte just about makes it work despite being short on facial nuance.

The 10-minute sequence in which he trails Sylvia through the streets makes superficially frustrating viewing, but is actually rich in significance.

Main character holds back from approaching her because he knows the reality of Sylvia will destroy the fantasy.

Lopez de Ayala spends most of her time wandering rapidely around Lafitte in close pursuit, but her qualities are evident when she finally speaks. She's a worthy object of desire.

Lensing occasionnally slips over into the emptily beautiful, as in the jaded image of leaves in the protag's sketchpad being flipped over by the breeze, but an extended sequence, featuring multiple reflections in complex counterpoint, is genuily striking, dovetailing neatly into pic's thesis that there's a world of romance in a simple glimpse.

Super sound design by Marisol Nievas is crucial to pic's effect, given the lack of dialogue, and amounts to a crisp, thickly textured symphony of the over-heard.

Lensing is an homage to the romance of the backstreets of Strasbourg.

Jonathan HOLLAND - VARIETY - Thursday, May 15, 2008.