Cairo Time
Dec. 12th, 2011 07:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI just watched a lovely movie called Cairo Time It came highly recommended - a quiet, complex, beautiful movie - but I watched it with some trepidation because, well. Let me give you a plot summation:
Juliette goes to Cairo on vacation to visit her husband, who works there. But she arrives only to find that he's been delayed, and has asked his friend and former coworker Tareq to meet her, and over the next few days Tareq and Juliette drift companionably through the city.
Does this not sound like a set-up for an adultery story?
But it isn't. There's an attraction there, but it is one that Juliette and Tareq barely act upon (they kiss, more or less on accident; and almost kiss again, but don't) and never openly acknowledge, because Juliette loves her husband - a fact that is always clear, though it's not openly stated either.
So the story is told through interstices: the silences in conversation and physical space between characters. The shots are much longer than they are wont to be in modern cinema, and often feature characters moving in and out of a frame that seems to be focused on something else. Close-ups are rare; the characters express emotion not so much through facial expression as through movement.
There are a number of stories that intersect briefly with Juliette's and Tareq's. Juliette's son has eloped, (but we never find out why). Juliette meets a pregnant Egyptian college student (but we never find out what happens to her) on a bus which is detained on the way to Gaza (for reasons that are never explained). Tareq years ago was in love with a woman named Yasmeen who broke his heart (but we never learn the details).
There's a sense of deliberate incompleteness. The characters seem to inhabit a brief bubble outside of normal time, beautiful but sad in the way that all short-lived things are sad. There can be no perfect happiness, but while they are there, there is a strange wistful joy.
Juliette goes to Cairo on vacation to visit her husband, who works there. But she arrives only to find that he's been delayed, and has asked his friend and former coworker Tareq to meet her, and over the next few days Tareq and Juliette drift companionably through the city.
Does this not sound like a set-up for an adultery story?
But it isn't. There's an attraction there, but it is one that Juliette and Tareq barely act upon (they kiss, more or less on accident; and almost kiss again, but don't) and never openly acknowledge, because Juliette loves her husband - a fact that is always clear, though it's not openly stated either.
So the story is told through interstices: the silences in conversation and physical space between characters. The shots are much longer than they are wont to be in modern cinema, and often feature characters moving in and out of a frame that seems to be focused on something else. Close-ups are rare; the characters express emotion not so much through facial expression as through movement.
There are a number of stories that intersect briefly with Juliette's and Tareq's. Juliette's son has eloped, (but we never find out why). Juliette meets a pregnant Egyptian college student (but we never find out what happens to her) on a bus which is detained on the way to Gaza (for reasons that are never explained). Tareq years ago was in love with a woman named Yasmeen who broke his heart (but we never learn the details).
There's a sense of deliberate incompleteness. The characters seem to inhabit a brief bubble outside of normal time, beautiful but sad in the way that all short-lived things are sad. There can be no perfect happiness, but while they are there, there is a strange wistful joy.
