In the City of Sylvia (2008)

In the City of Sylvia

Medium: Film
Director: José Luis Guerín
Country: Spain
Released: 2008
First Consumed: May 22, 2012
Format: Netflix Instant
Rating: 8.5/10

Another film of one person searching for something. A young man spends his days at a cafe, people-watching and sketching beautiful girls. We spend much of the film in the unnamed man's head. We see the beautiful women he sees, from his perspective. And when he takes special notice of one girl, we don't yet know why he starts following her, but it feels right.

We do eventually learn that he is looking for a Sylvia he met there some years ago, but the plot is irrelevant. The film is about perception and memory. The aforementioned sequence is the centerpiece of the film, and it's probably one of the greatest I've seen meant to put the audience totally within the head of its protagonist. His perception informs completely. We struggle, like him, to believe that the girl is not Sylvia. We want, like him, to believe that every passing beautiful girl is Sylvia.