Turn Back the Clock

Cairo Time

Directed by Ruba Nadda

[At the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema]

Running time: 89 min.

[Cairo Time] is, for the most part, a refreshingly old-fashioned adult romance of the kind that Katharine Hepburn specialized in during her 1950s spinster phase: A woman of a certain age meets a dashing, charming man and blossoms under his attention. But as comforting as the quietly cerebral charms of director-screenwriter Ruba Nadda’s film may be, its slavery to a different breed of romance is also its undoing.

Emotional repression is all well and good for crafting a heartbreaking film (Brief Encounter is still the best example, though Lost in Translation is a worthy successor), but there’s something about Cairo Time that feels disingenuous. Juliette (a radiant Patricia Clarkson) has traveled to Cairo to be with her U.N. official husband. But when he is delayed in Gaza, he sends his former security officer Tareq (Alexander Siddig). Luckily for Juliette, Tareq apparently has nothing to do but escort her around Cairo, before enjoying a platonic hookah with her in the evenings.

To Nadda’s credit, Cairo Time is so well-crafted and acted and features such burnished cinematography that it isn’t until the film’s last 20 minutes that Tareq’s speciousness becomes apparent. Tareq isn’t a real character—he’s the modern-day equivalent of the sexy “Other” that was safe for middle-aged, middle-class women to swoon over 50 years ago. Given almost no backstory except a long-ago broken heart (“Awww!” you can practically hear women cooing), Tareq is a non-threatening non-Caucasian who exists solely to gaze adoringly at Juliette and engage in some chaste activities with her: all of the romance with none of the threat. Juliette can return to her husband and her home feeling rejuvenated—and guilt-free. And Tareq… well, he’ll go back to whatever it was he was doing before Juliette. Drinking coffee in his café, one supposes. But at no point during Cairo Time does it ever occur to anyone, either on the screen or in the audience, to wonder exactly what Tareq does do.

Compared to other platonic film romances, this one comes up lacking, even with the note-perfect performances from Clarkson and Siddig. Lost in Translation lingers in the memory because both characters were so well-drawn; Juliette is underwritten, but Clarkson’s intelligence and expressive eyes fill in the blanks. Siddig has little to do but ooze charisma, which he does exceptionally well. Cairo Time is the equivalent of smiling at a handsome stranger passing by while on vacation; you may idly wonder about him later, but the encounter won’t leave you with any profound impact.