Simply Perfect

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Maybe it's personal, but I can't get over how much the filmmaker seems to want to project himself onto this portrait of the artist as a tres handsome, young broody male version of Farrah Fawcett. You know the type--pale, anemic, wane, tends to wax on about clouds or girls or some other such nonsense, in a self-imposed 'exile' to a land of pseudo-intellectual pretension (Petrarch--check) but whose values are completely mainstream, safely unsafe. Conventionally unconventional.Plus the male chauvinistic gaze just really grates me. If this guy is so allegedly obsessed with 'Sylvie,' then why does he so nonchalantly flirt/sleep with some other woman? It seems a little disingenuous.I get the filmmaker is trying to play with fiction, documentation etc etc. 'Play' is the right word, however. It doesn't get much deeper than that, and lacks the intensity of films of other (better, more seasoned, and more profound) directors in a similar vein--Marker, Akerman, Jia etc.If you're going to put yourself in your own work, you better make sure you don't come off an oblivious a**hole.

I've selected "may contain spoilers" although I'm not entirely sure you could spoil the experience of watching this in anyway by describing the entire "narrative". Boy sees girl, boy follows girl, boy finally talks to girl. Nothing much happens. I've given it 10 out of 10. That's 10 out of 10 if you're a people watcher of course! The observational skills required of the viewer remind me of the opening scene in the airport in Jacques Tati's "Playtime". I thought when I read the synopsis that it would be hard going but the time just flew by and the credits appeared all too soon.There have been discussions about the film being voyeurism, that it seeks to ogle women in the disguise of an art film. This is not how it struck me. The photography is ravishing and the actors are very beautiful I grant you, but the film as art idea that Guerin is pursuing here means it is inevitable that we look at beauty. Surely the boy is just as beautiful anyway. Are we voyeurs when we enter an art gallery or are we just innocent viewers who like beauty? It's an ongoing discussion between two points of view which will never see eye to eye and so is a redundant criticism of this film. I sense the dead hand of excessive Political Correctness here.Yes there are continuity errors people (what film hasn't), his jacket disappears between one shot and another at one stage for example. My point would be that it doesn't really matter. It doesn't impinge on the experience.Has he made a mistake or is she just trying to deny her way out of renewing the acquaintance? I wasn't sure that it was a mistake, he seems so certain. As in Haneke's "Hidden" Guerin does not provide us with a definitive answer. In this style of cinema, and I agree with the comments about this being film as art, who needs answers! Certainly not everybody's type of film, one or two walked out at the NFT3 viewing I was at, but for those of us prepared to put in the level of concentration required it was pure delight.

well, many of the people above me wrote that the movie was bad, but I actually really enjoyed it. I watched it in the Jerusalem Film Festival, and to be honest, one of the best movies I have seen. why? first of all, the cinematography is amazing. they have in most of the shots beautiful views, and interesting ways to film. second of all, the sound was VERY well made, and basically, those are the two main factors that make this movie a good movie. I think that you have MAX 100-200 words in the whole movie, and it is more of an artistic film, without really a very complex story to tell...I enjoyed it a lot, and I recommend it to Cinema lovers, because of its complex and interesting ways of film, and the wonderful soundtrack. if you are going to just "watch a movie"don't go because you will get bored.

Film as art, without a doubt. But I did not find it at all inaccessible or pretentious. Its in fact a warmly human film, not at all aloof, but a celebratory and generous hearted piece which meditates on themes like desire, beauty and the silent interaction of society. It achieves this through truly wonderful use of natural light and ambient street sounds whilst the film is framed and sequenced in a thoughtful, dedicated way. And the unobtrusive cast underplay to let the director's vision shine.It will not be to everyone's taste but I was hypnotized by this film, and deeply impressed by the purity of the film-makers' achievements here. Difficult to judge in terms of what has gone before, so I hope this film will establish a reputation as a stand-alone piece or even a ground-breaker in the coming years. Though unique in my experience, it also seems a natural next step in European cinema's long history of meandering, loosely-plotted films that are about atmosphere and everyday emotions rather than life-changing events.