Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 19 Ratings

  • Summary: A romantic drama about a brief, unexpected love affair that catches two people completely off-guard.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 26
  2. Negative: 0 out of 26
  1. As in David Lean's "Brief Encounter," the suspense in Cairo Time comes from what doesn't happen between its pair of "lovers."
  2. Think "In the Mood for Love" with hookahs instead of chopsticks.
  3. 80
    Like so many movie love stories before it - from Murnau's "Sunrise" to Linklater's "Before Sunrise," and beyond - Cairo Time is about two wandering lovers, people spending time together without realizing how precious that time will come to be.
  4. Writer-director Ruba Nadda's film is ultimately like a summertime flirtation that never quite comes to anything.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 7
  3. Negative: 2 out of 7
  1. Really beautiful, lush, intoxicating film. Seductive and inviting. I loved it and recommend it to anyone who is a fan of beautiful, artful filmmaking. http://poppingpictures.blogspot.com/2010/09/timing-is-everything.html Collapse
  2. Si no fuera por la gran Patricia Clarkson y por la fascinante -por lo menos en el filme- ciudad del Cairo, el más reciente largometraje de la cineasta canadiense Ruba Nadda no pasaría de ser un mero telefilme romántico. Pero con esos escenarios y con esta actriz, nada de eso. Además, hay que admitir que la señora Nadda dirige con solvencia esta sobria historia de amor nunca consumada. Expand
  3. Lyn
    7
    One reviewer's reference to "Brief Encounter" is apt: So much hinges on what may be left unsaid and undone. Enjoyable as long as you're not expecting much drama. The atmospherics of Cairo were quite entrancing -- though they seemed sanitized compared to what's gone on there recently and the revelations of how threatened women are, even walking down the street fully covered. I'm a big fan of Patricia Clarkson, in everything from "The Station Agent" to old "Frasier" reruns; she wraps up warmth, humor, strength and loneliness in one delicate package. In this, she's looking a bit wan and wizened . . . but does a good job keeping you wondering whether she will break from her usual moral code or not. Expand
  4. The movie is quite nice to watch, except for, and am I the only one to notice, I wonder, the main female character. She is nauseatingly ugly, and her looks make it hard to believe that any sort of chemistry could possibly exist between her and...a man. Why spend all that money on making a movie, and then cast someone with the looks of a witch from the woods ? I don't get it... Expand

See all 7 User Reviews

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