Are all women from Strasbourg so blazingly hot in real life?

Jen's beat me to the punch regarding our viewing of Dans la ville de Sylvie and it's accompanying documentary short, City of Cranes over there on BloodyPickle. But, because I'm having fun being girl reporter, I'm going to toss in my two cents, too.

The short was absolutely adorable. It really nothing beyond footage of construction cranes over the city of London with voiceovers ostensibly from the documentarian's recorded interviews with cranedrivers. These guys all really seem to love their solitary little jobs, wherein they sit perched above the city, invisible observers. The drivers all come off as self-consciously poetic in these interviews and it's completely endearing. They're working class men who've been given a platform on which they can, probably for the first time, speak to their own experiences. I was struck, I suppose, by the fact that someone chose to make this documentary in the first place. The life of a documentarian must be one of mono-focused obsession with minutia. But to make a little affectionate love ode to cranes and crane drivers? Sure. Why not?

And then, Dans la ville de Sylvie, our feature presentation. Yes, Jen, it was slow. But the more I think of it, the more it lingers with me. This film is a lyrical, tonal piece and watching it requires a sort of yoke-like attention span. Pacing is a tricky thing in a film of this nature-- one that is essentially plot-less. And I won't say that I was continually expecting something to "happen," but, taken in its entirety, I kind of love the silken-thread-iness of this very European kind of direction.

To orient those who are not Jen, this film is basically about nothing much, but it relays an almost-narrative about a guy who sits outside a cafe watching beautiful women, until he sees one girl, who looks like some old lover of his. He follows her throughout the streets of the city of Strasbourg, France until he actually approaches her on a bus. As it turns out, she is not the same girl at all. But it doesn't prevent him from pining for her for the rest of the film.

The look of the film is dazzlingly romantic, but not in a saccharine-y sort of way (which would make me hate it). This city is old and earthy and sun-drenched. There is a recurrent graffiti that declares, in crude black paint, "Laure, je t'aime." And there are recurrent people, too. There's a limping flower seller, a Caribbean man selling belts and cigarette lighters and several women move in and out of the quasi-narrative. The whole setting is suffused with wholesome sexuality, with none of twisted conflictedness that I find in so many of the films about which I write.

And these women. Honestly. They all wear clothes of soft, natural fabrics, of a soft, natural palette. Their hair is long and tousled-- or perhaps knotted into a slap-dash chignon. They're a little greasy with sweat and they might not have showered on the day of the shoot. They are uniformly beautiful, but each one striking. Are such faces and bodies really so common in France? Because, I mean, they're like wallpaper in this film. Imagine a film full of Julie Delpys--or at least, women who possess the tonal timbre of Julie Delpy, but each with her own particularities of face and gesture.

What I find particularly interesting, though, about a film so full to the brim with luscious Euro-flesh is that the camera doesn't leer. Not even once. And it spends what feels like eons gazing adoringly at each smooth, glowing face. The gaze is, for sure, male as most of the film is shot from the perspective of this young guy. But it's more detached and observant than it is actively lustful. The women exist within their own little lives and neither the man nor the camera seek to impose themselves. And when the man does finally choose to follow the one girl, breaking through the boundaries between them, she gives him a hard time for being creepy and he effusively apologizes-- in the only real conversation in the whole film. He seems to feel truly repentant that he broke her little bubble of independent selfhood. There is something in the detachment of the gaze though that feels, I don't know, respectful(?) of the women but also prevents us from learning anything about them beyond their lovely surfaces. It's a directorial maneuver, I think, designed to dazzle us with sensual information, but ultimately frustrate our desire to understand these people. And that's clever in that it's this maneuver that prevents my boredom, keeps me watching fascinatedly.

Ultimately, I found watching this film valuable because it's an exercise in patience. And paying attention to detail. Truly, the sound editing is masterful. Every footfall becomes meaningful and even the sound of pencil scratching paper captures your attention. I want to invoke the image of the yoke here again-- because it's as though, in order to really find meaning in a film in which nothing happens, that seems to skim along beautiful surfaces, you really employ whatever cerebral ropes are at your disposal to bind your attentive focus to the film--without relenting. This is the challenge that it poses-- and that's not a challenge that we're accustomed to encountering in movies.

So, yes, it's slow. And plotless and largely conversationless. And no, it's probably not the best choice if you're feeling distracted. But in approaching it on its own terms, as opposed to with my own expectations, it opened up into a fairly unique, heat-suffused, poetic experience for me. And it made me want to throw out all my make-up, put on something made of sheer cotton and go lollygag in the sun somewhere, preferably with a glass of passionfruit juice.