In the City of Sylvia

That Obscure Object of Desire. Thirty years after Buñuel’s last work, his compatriot Guerín, 60 years his junior, also came up with a film treating the phenomenon “fantasma femenino” – the phantom of the beautiful woman which weighs heavily on the imagination of fiery southerners. In Guerín’s story, headstrong Iberian passion is cultivated with a touch of the French esprit. A young painter arrives in Strasbourg in search of a woman who bewitched him here six years earlier. Caught in a web of fixations and adrift in the labyrinth of the anonymous city, the artist sits in the drama school café, watching life go by. Gazing at dozens of beautiful young women filing past whose faces might appear on the UNESCO list, like Strasbourg’s historical centre, the young man misguidedly tries to catch a glimpse of something which doesn’t exist anymore. Watching, waiting, sensing… The viewer is immersed in the ambient sounds of a city in which the path to illusion is free of unnecessary words. A film of gentle humour and irony, with an unspoken tribute to Bresson and Rohmer hovering above the summer city… –kviff.com