Cairo Time

Juliette Grant (Patricia Clarkson) travels from America to Cairo to meet her husband Mark (Tom McCamus), who belongs to the high echelon of UN and is settling refugees in Gaza. On the arrival, Juliette is welcomed by Tareq Khalifa (Alexander Siddig), an Egyptian that had worked with Mark and now is retired.

Mark has a problem in Gaza and can not come to Cairo, and the gentle Tareq invites Juliette to sail in the Nile and visit the pyramids. Juliette learns that she can not walk alone on the streets of Cairo since she is offensively harassed by the male locals, and she sightsees the city with Tareq. The proximity with her husband's friend and his attention to her make Juliette too attracted for Tareq. Will they have a love affair?

"Cairo Time" is a delicate and sensitive romance about companionship evolving to romance for mature audiences. Immediately after watching this pleasant film, I said to myself: this is certainly a film directed by a woman… and I was right. The sensitiveness of the director and author Ruba Nadda is impressive.

"Cairo Time" has magnificent cinematography and locations and the underrated Patricia Clarkson is excellent and with a perfect chemistry with Alexander Siddig. The music score is very beautiful and the conclusion of the affair of Juliette and Tareq is stunning. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Meus Dias no Cairo" ("My Days in Cairo")

I'm sorry to say this because I adore Patricia Clarkson but this movie is boring, the script seems forced, some characters like Elena Anaya have no sense and doesn't bring anything to the story.

The acting was good and the scenery breathtaking but it just doesn't work and is all very predictable. And to me it appeared that there weren't much chemistry between the actors.

After half of the movie you keep wondering just how much more can you take without falling asleep. But still I don't regret seeing it because it's quite rare seeing Patricia Clarkson as a lead and she surely does not disappoints.

I've known Alexander Siddig from playing Dr. Bashir on "Star Trek; Deep Space Nine". I've seen Patricia Clarkson in "Jumanji" and "Vicky Christina Barcelona". Both these two actors unite to give us a very touching love story set in the background of Cairo.

Egypt is a timeless land that has had history's touch upon it even as it enters the new millennium. People's lives are bound to the countryside as well as the old cities modernized with technology. Ruba Nadda, a young Canadian film maker, has set her newest story in the city of Cairo. It concerns the clash of two very different cultures, and how the past and present collide to form such a layered city as Cairo. As well as showing us wonderful scenes within the city, we are given exceptional cinematography of the surrounding countryside. The White Desert and the Pyramids stand out, etched out in the land, seemingly by giants who preceded modern civilization.

The film follows Juliette, a middle-aged woman arriving in Egypt. She would have been with her husband, but he is away on a mission for the UN. Her two children have grown up and have moved into adult phases of their lives. She is left to see the city by herself, aided by an old friend of her husband's: the middle-aged Egyptian Tariq, a retired policeman who now owns a coffee shop in Cairo. He helps Juliette out of his friendship to the absent Mark, and Juliette is intrigued by this soft-spoken man. Their feelings inevitably grow into affection, but the gradual steps taken to that stage is what makes the movie so tender and well made. Juliette's explorations of Cairo and the people that live within its shadow give us a view into the foreign culture that lies waiting to be discovered.

If Juliette must carry the movie, she is supported by some well-made characters. Tariq is clearly the prominent of these, but there is also Yasmeen, the former love interest of Tariq who wants to rekindle the relationship, and Kathryn, a kindly woman who leads Juliette on a trip in the White Desert outside of the city. And of course, there is the ever absent Mark, who is continually held away from his wife.

To say that this is a sentimental piece that tugs on heart-strings is redundant. However, it has a life of its own beyond the stereotypes of the genre, brought about by the fantastic chemistry between Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig. The two of them are professional actors and give us a love story that rivals the epic romance "Out of Africa" or the low-key "Lost in Translation".

Ruba Nadda also provides us with a well-written script that feels natural to the actors' tongues and the audience's ears. The mood of the film seems whimsical and light-hearted, especially during the scenes between the two leads, but there is a serious undertone played into the film. Questions are silently presented, aimed against such themes as love, fidelity, culture, and loneliness. Both characters are certainly lonely: Tariq has isolated himself from those that loved him, withdrawing into a kind of politeness that seems to discourage intimacy, while Juliette is isolated from her friends, her work, children, and her husband. Both need human contact, even as both must come to terms with their lives and what has come out of it all.

This small Canadian production has received a number of positive reviews, and has also won the Best Canadian Feature Award at the Toronto Film Festival. While I have certainly not seen all the Canadian films this year, I can definitely say that this was worthy of such an award. English Canadian cinema is so over-shadowed by Hollywood that one wonders if such cinema exists when compared to Quebec's film industry. However, once in a while, one can find such gems as this production, and be content to know that being Canadian means laying claim to truly great films such as this one.

I enjoyed seeing the movie, but it is hard to describe why in words. Is it the music, the scenes of Cairo, the magical pyramids, the performance of the actors, the unhurried pace? I don't know why I enjoyed the movie so much. Not one part of the movie is that spectacular. I grew up in the Middle East and heard the beautiful voice of Um Kalthoum a thousand times, encountered the sexual harassment on the streets and seen busy bazaars. Nothing in the movie was such a surprise for me. Yet somehow when you put all these elements together with the fantastic actors, it just works. I left movie theatre feeling uplifted and optimistic. The movie is visual poetry.

Cairo Time could be the solution to the date movie, so subtle and full of empathy it has no time for anything that might embarrass the person you are with and you'll have something to talk about later. I saw it alone for logistical reasons, but from the middle of the second row it was quite emersive. I'm no Cairofile; all I know is that the place has pyramids and a funny word for the water pipes they smoke. Those things are touched upon, but the movie avoids becoming a travelogue. Patricia Clarkson (The Green Mile) arrives for a vacation with her United Nations honcho husband Mark only to find he isn't there. He'll be busy in Gaza for a while (which is never played for a joke although we get the idea that settling things in Gaza could take a while). Alexander Siddig (Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) a former co-worker of Mark meets her instead and acts as a guide where he can. He would show her the pyramids right away, but she has promised her husband to see them for the first time with him. We might be able to guess where this is heading, but the surprise is that scenes that might not read as 2009 ADD generation content is actually loaded and engaging. We are waiting for tea to steep and not getting bored. Clarkson takes on more of a glow as the movie goes on, but in the early scenes it is her character Juliette's vulnerability that has our focus. A bunch of random flirtations from guys on the street might be a minor irritant in the USA or Toronto's Annex neighbourhood, but here there is a growing sense of jeopardy which reinforces the bubble of trust Siddig's character creates. For another character to burst that bubble by violating the camera frame with a sudden lunge from the teaming masses would be a shame, an intrusion of reality. And yet the film is very realistic as to the unexpressed aspect of life that can turn a bland setting into a postcard perfect image depending who you are with. The director Ruba Nadda spoke after the Varsity cinema screening I attended and it is remarkable that amid the strategies needed to pull off this movie she managed to maintain such a subtle focus. It is nice that also Christine Vachon's brand is there as a producer to suggest how subtlety in a movie might even be considered quirky. But it definitely has the patience and quiet faith in detail that mark Ruba Nadda's previous movie Sabah. I would love to read a diary publication about the making of Cairo Time. From content to execution it is apparently a film only Ruba could have made - it has both ethnic trappings with gravitas and an accessible romantic, dramatic structure of entertainment.