A woman (Juliette) visits her husband in Cairo but, because he is a very busy man, his retired friend (Tareq) is asked to take care of her while he's gone. In the absence of her husband, she starts exploring while getting a bit into trouble along the way. Luckily, Tareq is always there to save her, determined to make her stay as pleasant as possible. An unavoidable bond begins forming between them due to the extended time spent together but neither of them seems able to make the next step.It's a movie which has a great location for a romance but fails miserably to deliver it. Most of the movie, almost nothing happens, and when it does is as boring as it gets, nothing more than a few words are spoken. To be frank, I have seen a lot of documentaries which have a lot more "action" than this, fact which is simply unbearable for this type of movie.It is a complete waste of time which had a little opportunity to regain a bit of dignity with its finale but, as expected, in fails badly in that part as well. A bad movie, which wastes time instead of doing what a movie should do.

This is a beautiful and understated film. The plot is simple but the impact is huge. This has to be a woman's work, I thought, as I watched it and sure enough it was both written and directed by Ruba Nada. Patricia Clarkson is superb in her low key portrayal of Juliette Grant, a middle aged North American wife left alone in Cairo when her husband is delayed. The pace is languorously slow. The photography is rich and warm. It is a film of tiny and careful brush strokes rather than broad swipes and splashes. Ultimately the plot goes nowhere. But somehow that is the very real strength of this wonderful, artful film. I have been a frequent harsh critic here of Canadian movies. This is a refreshing exception.

there are so many differences between Mideastern and western cultures, specially in terms and conditions. you could catch the glory of the emotions between Tareq and Juliet, but you should understand the nature and meaning of "love" in countries like Egypt or (as I personally touched) Iran. love, or it's common synonym in middle east "eshgh", is not just a powerful desire to intercourse of being with lover (also there are some traditional love in oriental mysticism that encourage distance between lovers physically "hejran" so the lovers could mentally united. also, the lover always put his/her beloved in the highest rank of importance beside God. as Rumi said, it's not the matter of "I" and "you" but "Us". love is basically a mental issue in eastern cultures, and it should mirrored in respect, attention, care and unconditioned positive emotions. we saw Tareq that had, once upon a time, such emotions to Yasmin, and have such emotions to Juliet now. he refused Yasmin's letters in past and never write back because of her safety (both emotional and physical, who did not know the price of marriage betrayal in eastern countries?), but he show his real emotions when he heard that mark told Juliet about his emotion to a married woman and letters (both verbal: mark, the betrayer, and acting). so he did the same with Juliet, his friend's wife, a woman with shining smile on her face who cares about him and his feelings (it's obvious that Tareq is a Palestinian immigrant, when he talks about the fortunate trees that grow on their own soil, we can understand about his nationality and diaspora). he is injured, bitter and sad, but never forget to be a true human. that's the point. and if you want to see anything greater in a movie, I have no example for as perfection as I can see in "Cairo Time". puzzles are not obviously in text, but in context. enjoy!

In the summary it says that the affair that takes place in this movie catches the characters "unawares". If they are unaware, they are certainly the only ones. If anybody watching this movie doesn't know exactly what's going to happen within a few minutes, then they've fallen asleep. And if they've fallen asleep, they probably probably had a dream in which people said interesting things to each other and some of the things that took place came as a surprise.On the other hand, those of us not lucky enough to fall asleep at least get this much: At the end we are rewarded with exactly the ending we expected five minutes in.Yes, it's beautiful to look at. If you want to look at pretty shots of Cairo and the pyramids for 90 minutes, you might do better to pick up a few postcards and while away the hours looking at them. It would be silly to waste your time doing that, of course, but it would probably be a better waste of your time than sitting through this tired old movie.Patricia Clarkson may be a very good actress. But she is not a particularly interesting actress, at least not in this movie. And she certainly isn't playing a very interesting or compelling person in this movie. She is not helped much by a limpid script or by an uninspired director. There are hundreds of shots in "Cairo Time" of Patricia Clarkson doing pretty much nothing. Here she is lying in bed. Here she is staring out a window. Here she is walking down a street. She looks blank all the time. It's a profound statement about loneliness in a strange city. It must be awful to be alone in Cairo. But it's probably better to be alone in Cairo than it is to be with Patricia Clarkson in Cairo.There are many long takes of Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig looking at each other. I don't know what they're thinking. I know what I was thinking. I was thinking "could we please look at something else now?" How about some more pretty shots of the Nile?During much of this movie I found myself wondering how Cairo could be so quiet and sparsely populated. This is not what I'd heard about Cairo. Then it occurred to me that the making of this movie probably sent people running in the other direction. I began to wonder about the poor crew that had to work on this movie. It's bad enough to sit through the long boring scenes in this movie as a viewer. Imagine how excruciating it must have been for the crew who had to endure several takes of some of these dreadfully boring "episodes". I feel for anybody who had to endure any scene in this movie more than once.If you want to see a movie about a middle aged woman who unexpectedly falls in love with a man she is ill suited for in a beautiful location, then I would suggest "summertime" starring Katherine Hepburn and Rosanno Brazzi and directed by David Lean and set in Venice. Katherine Hepburn, though frequently annoying, is a much more interesting and inventive actress. Brazzi was a far more suitable foreigner to fall in love with. David Lean was a director who seemed to be engaged in what he was directing. And Venice is a better actor than Cairo.