Cairo Time

Cairo Time
(2009) [Trailer]
Director: Ruba Nadda (IMDB)

This movie was recommended to me by a good friend of mine who's theatrical recommendations I value more than most. So when the disc arrived from Netflix I was excited to get started with it.

Cairo Time is about a woman (Patricia Clarkson) who travels to Cairo (that's in Egypt for all you geographically challenged people out there) to meet her husband who's a diplomat in Gaza. He ends up getting held up in Gaza and she's left to fend for herself on the mean streets of Egypt. Not really, her husband's ex assistant (Doctor Bashir) lives in Cairo and is called upon to help take care of her. An unexpected romance forms between the two as they grow closer over the course of the week.

This movie is a very successful romance because it's not typical. It has all the right elements for it to be memorable in my book. It's set in a visually stimulating city, that's not your typical Paris or New York. Its score is interesting and the cinematography is captivating when it needs to be. The best thing about it though, is the story and acting. The two have a great chemistry and you feel the tension between them grow as the story moves forward. But rather take the obvious route and have the two fall head over heels for one another, the Director (Ruba Nadda) makes their romance an accident. The whole film you get the feeling that they want to do something, but know it's not right, or that it's not viable. At so many corners Nadda could have totally sunk this for me, but she avoided the pitfalls and made this a real winner. I'd definitely recommend it if you're in the mood for a drama.