Chris Knipp
08-29-2010, 02:03 AM
Ruba Nadda: CAIRO TIME (2010)
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/539/R4v0v5.jpg
ALEXANDER SIDDIG AND PATRICIA CLARKSON IN CAIRO TIME
A man and a woman and the Pyramids
Review by Chris Knipp
Cairo Time recounts a brief encounter between a man and a woman. Both meet in a kind of limbo, and what results is a touching romance whose politesse and restraint give it a distinctly old-fashioned air. The film has an elegance and class that help make up for a story that in contemporary terms may seem too slowly paced, somewhat lacking in punch or a sense of emotional completion. But ultimately perhaps it is not slowly paced enough. This is a film that eventually achieves too much balance; it succumbs to good taste in locations noted for their excess.
Juliette, an American lady, the editor of a magazine called Vous, arrives in Cairo airport for a vacation with her husband Mark (Tom McCamus, who appears only at the end). But he's been held up by a disturbance in the camps in Gaza, where he works. His tall, thin, dark, handsome and very urbane Syrian-educated former associate Tariq (Alexander Siddig, actually Sudan-born) greets her at the airport instead, incidentally running into an old flame just outside the airport building. Tariq takes Juliette to her beautiful, peaceful hotel, where her room has an improbably perfect balcony over the Nile.
The director, Ruba Nadda, a Canadian of Syrian and Palestinian heritage, has used the Cairo background, this immense, immemorial, overwhelming city, in a way that's relatively nuanced and free of cliché. It may seem a little too beautiful at times, not quite as hot and chaotic as the dialogue says it is, but it never feels prettified, or just a postcard (at least not a cheap one). Shots of the skyline and streets, the crowds, the traffic, the Pyramids, the little black and white taxis, the Nile, the bridges, gardens outside town, the beginnings of the Delta, are nice to look at, but also accurate. Only the ever-present dust has been inexplicably removed -- a detail that doesn't matter at night, when the city shines like a diamond -- but is quite strange in the daytime.
Though it must yield to soothing strings or piano chords from time to time, Egyptian music is given its due in the film, especially a couple of the great singers. Early on we're enveloped by the voice of the quintessentially Egyptian Umm Kalsoum, every Arab's favorite songstress, particularly her song "Alf layla wa layla," (1001 Nights), and Umm Kalsoum is not only heard but acknowledged in the dialogue. Soon after there's also equal emphasis given to a beautiful song by the extremely popular Egyptian male singer, Abdel Halim Hafez. And there are scenes shot at Feshawi, Cairo's old and famous café. This isn't just a travelogue. Cairo is a third leading character, a raison-d'être of the piece, which would feel so different if it were set in Bournemouth or Helsinki.
Juliette falls (politely, shyly) for Tariq, but she falls for Cairo too. It all happens very slowly, almost imperceptibly. An insensitive male viewer in fact would be tempted to say it never happens at all. At first Tariq isn't even a companion or guide. He leaves Juliette alone, and despite an awkward phone call from Mark, she's in a protective bubble that stifles her, like the lead characters in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, whose action Cairo Time somewhat parallels. She's besieged by lusty young men when she goes out on the street in a short-sleeved blouse, like Monica Vitti in the Sicilian town in Antoinioni's L'Avventura. In desperation Juliette enters (somehow) the male-only café Tariq now runs, interrupting his chess game and later, to the men's delight, beating him. She wants to be taken around. He is a retired diplomat, after all -- and single -- so he finally indeed begins, very politely, to take Juliette for what she asks for, "adventure." They go on a Nile boat ride -- and she can't swim, so that's risk-taking. They break her promise to Mark, and go to see the Pyramids, at the perfect time, when they are not only beautiful but empty. No hawkers of camel rides and Coca Cola or boys pushing fake antiquities accost them.
While Nadda, who wrote the screenplay inspired by her own solitary travels in Egypt, is narrowly skirting the obvious in these touristic rounds, no matter how delicately they are stage managed, she is obviously concerned with cultural issues. Here is an Arab man who not only isn't a terrorist, or a loud boor; he's suave and civilized, with a dreamy ironic look in his eyes; no "Reel Bad Arabs" here. Juliette wants to avoid "the petroleum wives," and she has done so. She knows Muslim males don't all have four wives. She acknowledges that a young woman's hijab can be beautiful. Neither she nor Tariq seems to know, however, that they are going to be attracted to each other. But on the train coming back to Cairo from a day trip, Juliette murmurs that she might like to find a place to live here, and start her own café, a "female-only" one. She also wants to do a piece for Vous about the plight of street kids. (She might find out they have big supportive families, like the Zabbaleen, the Cairo garbage people.) A lady Juliette befriends talks about the role of women in the "Middle East" -- a term Tariq finds silly (though it exists equally in Arabic). Perhaps Nadda has a little too much to say?
In a review for NPR Ella Taylor contemptuously refers to this odd couple as "cut-rate Somerset Maugham and retro Merchant-Ivory," but I don't think that's the problem. With its beautiful images and authentic music, Cairo Time presents a very pleasant, sometimes almost mesmerizing experience. Patricia Clarkson, a 51-year-old blond babe, seems often to have nothing to do but sit and smile sadly, or twitch an eyebrow; yet she does these things with such immense competence, this seems one of her best roles. But its frequent stillness is why the film reminds me of Antonioni. How eccentric and original to use Cairo for a film that's quiet, and in which almost nothing happens! I only wish Ruba Nadda, who is a little too earnest, had more the courage of her longeurs, and then finally allowed heself a little nod toward the desperation and loneliness these stranded would-be lovers must at least partly feel.
Cairo Time premiered at Toronto, September 2009, opened in US theaters August 6, 2010.
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/539/R4v0v5.jpg
ALEXANDER SIDDIG AND PATRICIA CLARKSON IN CAIRO TIME
A man and a woman and the Pyramids
Review by Chris Knipp
Cairo Time recounts a brief encounter between a man and a woman. Both meet in a kind of limbo, and what results is a touching romance whose politesse and restraint give it a distinctly old-fashioned air. The film has an elegance and class that help make up for a story that in contemporary terms may seem too slowly paced, somewhat lacking in punch or a sense of emotional completion. But ultimately perhaps it is not slowly paced enough. This is a film that eventually achieves too much balance; it succumbs to good taste in locations noted for their excess.
Juliette, an American lady, the editor of a magazine called Vous, arrives in Cairo airport for a vacation with her husband Mark (Tom McCamus, who appears only at the end). But he's been held up by a disturbance in the camps in Gaza, where he works. His tall, thin, dark, handsome and very urbane Syrian-educated former associate Tariq (Alexander Siddig, actually Sudan-born) greets her at the airport instead, incidentally running into an old flame just outside the airport building. Tariq takes Juliette to her beautiful, peaceful hotel, where her room has an improbably perfect balcony over the Nile.
The director, Ruba Nadda, a Canadian of Syrian and Palestinian heritage, has used the Cairo background, this immense, immemorial, overwhelming city, in a way that's relatively nuanced and free of cliché. It may seem a little too beautiful at times, not quite as hot and chaotic as the dialogue says it is, but it never feels prettified, or just a postcard (at least not a cheap one). Shots of the skyline and streets, the crowds, the traffic, the Pyramids, the little black and white taxis, the Nile, the bridges, gardens outside town, the beginnings of the Delta, are nice to look at, but also accurate. Only the ever-present dust has been inexplicably removed -- a detail that doesn't matter at night, when the city shines like a diamond -- but is quite strange in the daytime.
Though it must yield to soothing strings or piano chords from time to time, Egyptian music is given its due in the film, especially a couple of the great singers. Early on we're enveloped by the voice of the quintessentially Egyptian Umm Kalsoum, every Arab's favorite songstress, particularly her song "Alf layla wa layla," (1001 Nights), and Umm Kalsoum is not only heard but acknowledged in the dialogue. Soon after there's also equal emphasis given to a beautiful song by the extremely popular Egyptian male singer, Abdel Halim Hafez. And there are scenes shot at Feshawi, Cairo's old and famous café. This isn't just a travelogue. Cairo is a third leading character, a raison-d'être of the piece, which would feel so different if it were set in Bournemouth or Helsinki.
Juliette falls (politely, shyly) for Tariq, but she falls for Cairo too. It all happens very slowly, almost imperceptibly. An insensitive male viewer in fact would be tempted to say it never happens at all. At first Tariq isn't even a companion or guide. He leaves Juliette alone, and despite an awkward phone call from Mark, she's in a protective bubble that stifles her, like the lead characters in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, whose action Cairo Time somewhat parallels. She's besieged by lusty young men when she goes out on the street in a short-sleeved blouse, like Monica Vitti in the Sicilian town in Antoinioni's L'Avventura. In desperation Juliette enters (somehow) the male-only café Tariq now runs, interrupting his chess game and later, to the men's delight, beating him. She wants to be taken around. He is a retired diplomat, after all -- and single -- so he finally indeed begins, very politely, to take Juliette for what she asks for, "adventure." They go on a Nile boat ride -- and she can't swim, so that's risk-taking. They break her promise to Mark, and go to see the Pyramids, at the perfect time, when they are not only beautiful but empty. No hawkers of camel rides and Coca Cola or boys pushing fake antiquities accost them.
While Nadda, who wrote the screenplay inspired by her own solitary travels in Egypt, is narrowly skirting the obvious in these touristic rounds, no matter how delicately they are stage managed, she is obviously concerned with cultural issues. Here is an Arab man who not only isn't a terrorist, or a loud boor; he's suave and civilized, with a dreamy ironic look in his eyes; no "Reel Bad Arabs" here. Juliette wants to avoid "the petroleum wives," and she has done so. She knows Muslim males don't all have four wives. She acknowledges that a young woman's hijab can be beautiful. Neither she nor Tariq seems to know, however, that they are going to be attracted to each other. But on the train coming back to Cairo from a day trip, Juliette murmurs that she might like to find a place to live here, and start her own café, a "female-only" one. She also wants to do a piece for Vous about the plight of street kids. (She might find out they have big supportive families, like the Zabbaleen, the Cairo garbage people.) A lady Juliette befriends talks about the role of women in the "Middle East" -- a term Tariq finds silly (though it exists equally in Arabic). Perhaps Nadda has a little too much to say?
In a review for NPR Ella Taylor contemptuously refers to this odd couple as "cut-rate Somerset Maugham and retro Merchant-Ivory," but I don't think that's the problem. With its beautiful images and authentic music, Cairo Time presents a very pleasant, sometimes almost mesmerizing experience. Patricia Clarkson, a 51-year-old blond babe, seems often to have nothing to do but sit and smile sadly, or twitch an eyebrow; yet she does these things with such immense competence, this seems one of her best roles. But its frequent stillness is why the film reminds me of Antonioni. How eccentric and original to use Cairo for a film that's quiet, and in which almost nothing happens! I only wish Ruba Nadda, who is a little too earnest, had more the courage of her longeurs, and then finally allowed heself a little nod toward the desperation and loneliness these stranded would-be lovers must at least partly feel.
Cairo Time premiered at Toronto, September 2009, opened in US theaters August 6, 2010.