In The City of Sylvia

Reasons I loved this:

- Made me forget it was a film. A scene of a man sitting on the terrace cafe of Strasbourg's Conservatoire watching people drinking and chatting lasts for over 20 minutes. As a summation of another film put it, "pure cinema". As Peter Bradshaw put it, "In the City of Sylvia reminds you that most cinema discourages you from looking, really looking".

- Sound design as good as Elephant. Came out of the cinema with an exaggerated ear for footsteps, the rise and fall of chattering voices.

- The lack of dialogue. One scene of a conversation in nearly an hour and a half.
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- the quietness of the film.

- And the length of the takes. Long, long, long...

- The loveliness of Strasbourg in the summer. Made me want to go there.
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- The depth of field of the compositions. Watching a square opening onto many alleys with no idea where people were going to come from, sound emanating from behind the camera, beyond the camera, people crossing, passing each other and the camera, a bottle rolling down the street, a bicycle going past...

- The hints at other directors - Hitchcock, Linklater etc ...

- The ability to create amazing suspense from a simple encounter. When the man finally asks the girl if she's Sylvia, I, like Bradshaw, was on the edge of my seat.

- The many interpretations it gives. Lil hated it (at first?) for its focus on beautiful women. I saw it as an extremely subtle comment on the images we create, both in terms of the dreams we make for ourselves based on very little fact, and the images we as a society create of women and romantic love.

- The imaginative visuals created from filming the reflections the windows of moving trams - people look ghostly, like apparitions, their form not certain.

- This is definitely in my top films of the year so far. Can't make up my mind whether it has toppled The Class or not. Here's the trailer:



And here, actually, is the first 9 minutes of the film! This Youtube user has uploaded the whole film in 9 parts. As there's hardly any dialogue, anyone can watch it!