To Bathe in Filmic Waters

In the City of Sylvia | José Luis Guerín, 2008

Many tend to forget that film is the only popular medium in which one may tell a story without actually telling it. We forget that our good friend dialogue wasn’t present at the birth of cinema, nor was he expected. These days it seems that the screenplay is a critical step in the production process of a film, rather than an optional one. Works of the cinematic orientation conceived merely from a whispered concept are now worryingly rare, which makes it all the more heartening when a special one comes along. José Luis Guerín’s masterful visual tale Dans la Ville de Sylvie / En la Ciudad de Sylvia / In the City of Sylvia (delete where applicable) opens with a lingering shot of our nameless protagonist as he pores over a worn notebook. This lengthy take is Guerín’s indicative way of establishing his main character without actually divulging any notable information. All we see is a young man with his crinkled brow, flowing locks and increasingly chewed pencil. His pensive form evokes the feeling of a modern day Arthur Rimbaud; he is an artist, a dreamer. Guerín approaches all his subjects in this patient and observant manner, whether it be the bustling, old European town in which In the City of Sylvia is set or indeed the varied and specious ladies our blue-eyed dreamer so lovingly studies.

As expected, the plot here is about as loose as the un-ironed shirt our protagonist so gracefully inhabits, but that’s not to say this takes away from the overall experience. His incessant scribbling and staring at a local café leads to a curious pursuit through the sun-drenched streets, and it’s this central sequence that stands out as the film’s strong point. He is looking to catch the attention of a dark-haired woman whom he has confused as a long lost love, but we never really know whether or not this is the whole truth. In the City of Sylvia may shun the conventional use of dialogue, but that doesn’t mean our ears aren’t treated to a symphony of evocative sounds; sounds that seem altogether louder given the lack of spoken words, almost as if this lack of any natural dialogue allows us a chance to really listen. It is however the other sense that Guerín is more interested in, and it is his use of perspective in particular that impresses. Those aforementioned scenes at the café are mesmerizing in their constant changing of perspective – from close to far – and shots on different planes are composed almost seamlessly in a ballet of hair and eyes and parted lips. Its visual prowess is already the stuff of legend, and one can only hope that In the City of Sylvia continues to receive the kind of exposure it – and world cinema – surely deserves.

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