José Luis Guerín’s mysterious, enthralling film unfolds with the simplest of premises. An anonymous young man returns to the unnamed French city where he first saw, six years ago, a beautiful woman named Sylvia. He sits in a café, where he people-watches, eavesdrops, and occasionally sketches in his notebook. Spotting a woman he’s convinced is Sylvia, he follows her; she finally tells him she’s not the one he’s searching for. But the seeker is not to be deterred: The next day, he continues his ritual of café-visiting, wandering around, and looking. Though its plot may be minimal, In the City of Sylvia is a film filled with intriguing ideas about the act of looking, memory, time, dreams, and desires. In other words, it is a movie about the very power of cinema itself, which requires us to gaze intently, listen, lose ourselves in reverie, and always search for patterns of recognition.