At the Arthouse

Sit Watch Enjoy: Egyptian capital is the star of bittersweet Cairo Time

At times, "Cairo Time" feels like the forgotten older sister of the glitzyblockbuster "Eat Pray Love."
Cairo and its surroundings are the real star of the movie

Maybe the fact that Cairo Time was released around the same time as Eat Pray Love is pure coincidence, but the earlier, less trumpeted film does feel a bit like the forgotten older sister of the glitzy blockbuster.

Like Julia Roberts’ Liz, Patricia Clarkson’s Juliette—Clarkson finally gets a starring role!—is a woman journalist alone in an exotic locale. Cairo, in case you didn’t read the title. An exotic man comes into her life who is damned near as appealing as Javier Bardem. Will the two of them be together when the final credits roll?

Actually, I’m misrepresenting Cairo Time a bit here. The film is so low key, and its characters so circumspect, that a passion-driven ending seems out of the question.

Alexander Siddig’s Tareq is perhaps as charismatic and romantic as Bardem’s Brazilian in Bali, but he’s a self-proclaimed fatalist who doesn’t want to “seize the day.” He did seize it once before and got burned, so now he plays it cool. Unlike Roberts’ Liz Gilbert, Tareq remains true to his self-imposed limitations, and his deep eyes well with sadness when the movie ends. Surprisingly, Cairo Time winds up being his story more than Juliette’s.

But I’m continuing to misrepresent the movie. Because it’s not really any one character’s story. It’s about a sensual, if not exactly erotic threesome between a lonely American woman, an even lonelier Egyptian man, and the beautiful but melancholy city of the title.

Juliette is in Cairo for the first time to vacation with her U.N.-official husband, Mark. Tareq is Mark’s former colleague. When Mark gets caught up in a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and can’t join his wife in Cairo, he asks Tareq to show her around.

He was taking quite a chance, as Tareq has charm and looks to spare. But maybe Mark didn’t realize how close the chaotic and single-woman-adverse city would come to shattering his wife. She can’t walk through the intriguing casbah without being followed and harassed by men; she can’t really go anywhere without being stared at, so she has to turn to Tareq for nearly full-time companionship.

He responds with a courtliness that seems to hint at something deeper, and I wondered how long Juliette (why that loaded name?) would be able to resist his abundant charms. But before long I stopped really caring how she would respond. That’s because, despite Clarkson’s nice calibrated performance, Juliette isn’t a well-developed character. The state of her marriage is never made clear, and for a journalist who deals with substantial issues she seems surprisingly uneasy in unfamiliar surroundings.

The almost relationship and the regrets it inspires feel pleasingly real and down to earth, but it lacks that extra oomph that we go to the movies for.

No, the title character itself is the best reason to see Cairo Time. Director Ruba Nadda has made a valentine to the city. Like a valentine, the film looks on the bright side. Cairo’s pressing urban problems get a quick glance, but its enduring beauty gets the long takes. Which is as it should be in an escapist movie like this.

The Middle East’s bigger issues hover around the film’s edges, but Nadda never lets them in. Instead she gives us a city that is more romantic than her characters.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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