CAIRO TIME (2009): An Affair to Remember
December 12th 2011 01:54
Category: No Category
Veteran indie actress Patricia Clarkson (Lars and the Real Girl, Good Night and Good Luck, Vicky Cristina Barcelona) portrays Juliette, a busy editor at a glossy magazine, who has come to visit her husband Mark (Tom McCamus) … and doesn’t really get to see him, as he has the challenging job of setting up refugee camps in Gaza for United Nations. Because Mark cannot get away, he sends an ex-work associate Tareq (Alexander Siddig, Clash of the Titans, Syriana, Deep Space Nine) to help his wife settle in. Although originally from Sudan and not Egypt, Siddig has a whiff of old-world Omar Sharif kind of charm about him, and the role of Tareq (meaning “he who pounds at the door” in Arabic) was written specifically for him.
The two protagonists are not novices experiencing the blush of first love. They are mature individuals, somewhat set in their ways and perhaps even resigned to their lots in life. Juliette is lonely, lost, confused and therefore vulnerable. Her distracted, silly faux pas, one after the other, would irritate the hell out of most people. But not the infinitely patient and polite - to the point of martyrdom - Tareq. Eastern sensuality and direct manner as exhibited by Tareq’s previous flame Yasmeen (Ameena Annabi) are disconcerting to Juliette. Her cluelessness about local realities, values and customs constitute a veiled critique of Western privilege and entitlement, which Juliette transcends through her heartfelt connections with local people and her willingness to learn about and embrace a foreign, and often confronting, culture with grace and charm.
Juliette and Tareq’s cross-cultural romance is like glamorous, courtly throwback to 1950s Hollywood, a retro-imagining, akin to Todd Hayne’s Far From Heaven or Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love, but largely sans the melodrama. It is about a passion unfulfilled, a road not taken, and yet it is quietly satisfying in its lyricism. Cairo Time is a rare treat in that it takes its time to trace and savour the subtle vacillations in the emerging feelings its two protagonists unexpectedly develop for one another, whilst delicately balancing this theme with social commentary in the background. The pair’s connection is at a deeper, soul level, with overtones of longing and nostalgia. Ultimately they are like the pyramids they climb together, amorously facing one another, yet some distance apart.
This line has become a cliché in film criticism, but here it is unavoidable: the real star of Cairo Time is Cairo itself. Shot with such tenderness and care, that some critics have dismissed the film as a travelogue, to those that have fallen in love with a city before its role in the film is abundantly clear. It becomes akin to the Rome of Roman Vacation and Fellini’s Roma, the Paris of Amelie or Breathless. According to Nadda, it is the trip that she has taken to Cairo as a teenager that has inspired her to become a filmmaker – and it shows, in the shots of Cairo bustling with heat and life, in the desolately sublime desert landscapes, and in local colour minutiae closely observed in stunning detail.
Cairo Time won the Best Canadian Feature Film Award at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.
Review by Patricia Bieszk
First published on Suite101.
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