Toronto. In the City of Sylvia.

"Virtually a silent movie apart from the everyday sounds of the French city of Strasbourg, Spanish director José Luis Guerín's lyrical tale of forlorn love, In the City of Sylvia, is a treat for romantics and people watchers," wrote Ray Bennett when he caught the film in Venice for the Hollywood Reporter.

"But the movie is deliberate to a fault," objects Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Is there anything conveyed in a 20-minute walking scene that couldn't be gotten across in a 5-minute walking scene? Slot Sylvie alongside Silent Light as yet another well-shot, precisely shaded mood piece that I admired in fragments, but that on the whole, I didn't much like. But for what it's worth, many of the same people who've been raving about Silent Light called this their favorite film of the festival."

As it happens, on Darren Hughes's list, it's the only "Masterpiece."

Boyd van Hoeij talks with Guerín for Cineuropa.

Posted by dwhudson at September 19, 2007 12:44 AM