Cairo Time

Last night the people from the TIFF aired a free outdoor viewing of Cairo Time in Metro Square.  For those of you who don't know Toronto hosts quite an extensive list of free outdoor movies during the summer.  The movies range from popular main stream movies to more artistic/independent fair.  If you love movies and want a fun night out, I highly recommend that you check some of these out. Google, as always, is your friend for finding out times and locations of these events.

I found Cairo Time to be a complicated movie with, in my opinion, two faces.  At face value, its a movie about a women, Juliette, who arrives in Cairo to visit her husband who works for the U.N. in the region.  We are told early on that her husband will be delayed, due to a crisis, and so she is left to her own devices in this strange (to her) city.  It's during his absence that Juliette befriends and falls in love with Tariq, her guide in the city.  Many people will say that this is the main purpose of the movie.. but.. I would suggest that on the other side of the coin the movie is an expose to the area and culture of the region and that the plot line is just a means of knitting that together.   Throughout this visually stunning movie we are shown all the beautiful areas and regions of Cairo, its culture and unrests.   We are shown it's people and there differing attitudes about women, marriage, poverty, and religion.  In the end I enjoyed the movie for this latter aspect.. but found the story line, a bit sad, and distracting.  (3.5/6.0)