FILM REVIEW
Cairo Time
Sorely lacking in tension, this Canadian film is little more than a pretty travelogue
Last Updated: Thursday, October 8, 2009 5:53 PM ET
Comments7Recommend24By Lee Ferguson,
CBC News
Cairo Time, winner of the Best Canadian Film prize at this year´s Toronto International Film Festival, has many things going for it: exotic locations, gorgeous cinematography, Patricia Clarkson and a script that believes a middle-aged woman´s inner life is compelling fodder for a feature-length film.
The romance in Cairo Time is curiously inert and inconsequential.
But it´s also the kind of movie where tasteful characters move around in tasteful hotel suites while wearing tasteful white linen dress shirts. There´s something a bit sterile about the film - I admire Cairo Time, but I wish I cared about it more.
The story centres on Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), a Canadian magazine editor who arrives in Cairo for a vacation with her diplomat husband, Mark (Tom McCamus), only to learn he´s been waylaid at a refugee camp in Gaza. Mark´s former colleague and friend, Tareq (Alexander Siddig), is a Cairo native and offers his travel-guide services to Juliette before depositing her at her posh hotel.
Toronto writer-director Ruba Nadda works wonders with this opener - Juliette is so jetlagged she resembles an extra from Night of the Living Dead, and after waking from one of many naps, she lies alone in bed, laughing at the zoned-out state she´s in. Her first solo excursions in Cairo are equally disorienting - we see scenes of Juliette standing on a congested street, surrounded by nothing but honking cars and smog, which wordlessly convey the feeling of trying to adjust to the rhythms of a city that´s not your own.
Clarkson, always a live wire, suggests Juliette is a woman who doesn´t believe in down time. She fiddles with her laptop and, in quieter moments, hints of vague dissatisfaction and loneliness flutter across her face. At night on the phone, she tells Mark she´s dreading the thought of attending embassy dinners with the "petroleum wives" she loathes, and jokes that she´ll go crazy if she doesn´t find something to do while in Egypt.
A chance meeting with Tareq at a local café helps her to finally get her bearings. The two embark on a series of day trips, in which cinematographer Luc Montpellier expertly captures all of the hustle and bustle of the Cairo streets - there are plenty of vibrant shots of the colourful hijabs, jewelry stalls and bright green melons that fill up the city´s noisy, bustling marketplaces. There´s a nice grittiness to these scenes of urban Cairo, which are far more interesting than some of the more obvious travelogue moments, like when Juliette goes boating on the Nile.
Though Tareq agreed to act as Juliette´s gentlemanly host out of loyalty to Mark, the two begin to forge a more complicated bond. She´s grateful to have a companion who can explain the local customs (and teach her to smoke a hookah pipe), but one senses the outings mean more to her than that. Somehow, in all of this conversation, Juliette displays parts of herself she can never unveil at home. In turn, Tareq seems genuinely tickled by this woman who will boldly walk into an all-male café and beat him at chess. As Tareq explains, many men in Cairo "believe women´s voices should not be heard at all."
Their budding romance bears more than a passing resemblance to the one depicted in Sofia Coppola´s Lost in Translation. Like that film, Cairo Time is largely concerned with the things that go unsaid - there are a lot of simmering, meaningful glances exchanged in the film´s latter half. I appreciate Nadda´s attempts to make a movie where the emphasis is on subtlety and loaded silences, but the romance in Cairo Time is curiously inert and inconsequential.
A lot of this stems from the film´s uneven script, which is delicate in some moments, far too exposition-heavy in others. Equating Juliette´s name with a certain doomed Shakespearean heroine, or mentioning Mark´s "good heart" near the beginning certainly telegraphs things. Juliette´s status as a diplomat´s wife also undercuts a lot of the tension that might arise from the fish-out-of-water setup.
When a bus riding through a more remote part of Egypt is stopped and searched by heavily armed soldiers, there´s never a doubt Juliette´s passport and UN affiliations will ensure she´s safely back in Cairo by day´s end. Without any real danger in Juliette´s sightseeing and romantic scenes, it´s difficult to feel all that invested in the outcome.
This is a shame, because the two leads give it their all, each bringing some much-needed emotional weight to Cairo Time´s final scenes. Still, viewers are likely to emerge from the movie feeling a bit like road-weary travellers themselves - after the memories of the exotic food, customs and interesting people have faded, mostly they´ll just remember the pretty pyramids.
Cairo Time opens in Toronto and Montreal on Oct. 9, Halifax, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Victoria on Oct. 16 and in Ottawa on Oct. 23.
Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.Read more:
http://wpop9.libero.it/cgi-bin/vlink.cgi?Id=4bQDSk4snrx/Bai%2BYFioaGpt%2BErCddXaDqeVIICqFHZnX4Iq4tJbg55jgY2Y/rce&Link=http%3A//www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2009/10/08/f%2Dcairo%2Dtime%2Dreview.html%23ixzz0v59AVGjR----------------------------------------------
http://wpop9.libero.it/cgi-bin/vlink.cgi?Id=4bQDSk4snrx/Bai%2BYFioaGpt%2BErCddXaDqeVIICqFHZnX4Iq4tJbg55jgY2Y/rce&Link=http%3A//www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20091008/ENT_cairo_time_review_091009/20091009%3Fhub%3DMovieReviews'Cairo Time' a masterful look at repressed romance
Repressed passions stir the air in "Cairo Time," Ruba Nadda's sumptuous new tale about two strangers who struggle with attraction.
Actress Patricia Clarkson stirs this illicit pot with electric ease.
Clarkson, Nadda and co-star Alexander Siddig serve up something here that could easily be called a chick flick.
Don't sell "Cairo Time" so short.
There are no flavour-of-the-month faces here. No bonehead story lines, indigestible camp or stale clich?s.
What Clarkson and company do deliver is a finely-drawn, grown-up look at an age-old question: "Should I or shouldn't I?"
Set against the sun-drenched bustle of Cairo's streets, magazine editor Juliette (Clarkson) arrives to join Mark, her Canadian diplomat husband (Tom McCamus).
To her dismay, escalating tensions in Palestinian territories keep Mark stranded in Gaza and Juliette stuck in a hotel waiting for his return.
Nadda wisely keeps the camera on Juliette's resigned face. Slowly and steadily, she hints at something stirring behind Juliette's luminous, cornflower blue eyes as she scans Cairo from the safety of her balcony.
Of course, that deliberate pacing might annoy those who like their action fast and their noise meter cranked way past the decibel on "Transformers 1 or 2."
But, look past this devoted wife's still, 40-something exterior and you intuit a swell of unhappiness churning inside Juliette's head and heart.
Suddenly, the enigma that Juliette is comes careening towards us. Is she happily married? Is her husband having an affair? Is Juliette about to crack?
The subtle subtext that Clarkson plays so well gives this elegant, secretly-sorrowed woman a sense of mystery that rivals Egypt's pyramids.
Whatever is going on inside in her mind, we're stuck to Juliette like white on rice -- much like her husband's former employee, Tareq (Alexander Siddig).
Tired of waiting, Juliette invites this lanky looker to show her Cairo.
Tareq's the perfect gentleman: Kind, attentive and protective, as well, when the local men swarm Juliette at the first sight of her milky skin and long-flaxen hair.
His attraction to the boss' wife, however, is right there in Siddig's big, sea-green orbs.
Ditto for Juliette.
There, amidst those silent walks and intimate meals they share together, the pair's unspoken passion for one another pounds the screen.
Will Juliette stray? Can Mark's honorable friend control himself? The tensions build with nothing more than a stroke of a hand or a lingering look.
Have audiences forgotten how good that can be? Not so judging by the film's reception at the Toronto International Film Festival.
I personally sat in a row filled with men and women of all ages at the film's premiere. They applauded the fact that two ordinary people did a seemingly extraordinary thing by Hollywood's "more is more" standards: They just said no.
It's not a decision that comes easily. In fact, one of "Cairo Time's" most electric moments comes when Tareq takes one bold step towards Juliette in her hotel room. She skittishly recoils, then steps towards him and smiles, "Let's go."
That's not code for "Hey, let's jump into the sack." Not by a long shot.
In an act that signals just how much she feels for this man, Juliette takes Tareq to the pyramids -- a trip she had been saving to share with husband. If that doesn't say I want you, what does?
We never really know if Juliette regrets choosing her marriage over that "over-the-moon" love Tareq awakens her to.
But, in an age where every thought, feeling and body part is out there for everyone to see, Nadda does something daring with "Cairo Time."
She bravely revisits a style of romantic filmmaking that has not been seen since "Brief Encounter," David Lean's 1945 classic. The end result is moving, modern and visually stunning even by Lean's standards.
As for Clarkson, who came to this film after playing a Southern belle-turned-artiste in Woody Allen's comedy, "Whatever Works," Juliette screams to the world that there is no one like her working in Hollywood today.
Once Shakespeare's star-crossed Juliet filled my memory banks. Now Clarkson's Juliette lingers there too - as does "Cairo Time's" welcome reminder that less is more.
