FILM REVIEW: CAIRO TIME

Paramount Pictures
Now Showing

Ruba Nadda’s new film could best be described as a love poem. Make that two love poems: one to the Egyptian capital which it effectively captures so evocatively you’ll be tempted to book a flight; the second to Patricia Clarkson, the velvet-y voiced actress who you’ll recognise from countless supporting roles but who gets a rare leading role here and shines.

Clarkson plays Juliette, a magazine editor who, having just seen the last of her children flee the nest, arrives in Cairo for a vacation with her husband. He works for the UN and trouble in Gaza has him delayed but Juliette is spared the hazards of navigating Cairo’s busy streets, and the attentions of its menfolk, by Tareq (Alexander Siddig), a former employee of her husband’s who now runs a local coffee house.

Tareq escorts Juliette throughout the city, visiting the gardens, attending a wedding and taking a boat ride on the Nile. But not to the pyramids which seem visible from every part of the city; she’s saving them for her husband. And that’s pretty much the film: Juliette and Tareq, walking and talking, talking and walking; an attraction between the two becoming increasingly evident. But will they or won’t they? Think Before Sunrise/Sunset for the post-40s.

Cairo Time is very much a small film and there’s nothing wrong with that. There is far less agreeable company to spend 100 minutes with than Patricia Clarkson. (Side note: How lucky is the child who gets to hear that voice read them bedtime stories?) Alexander Siddig also makes for a more than agreeable host, while the sights and sounds of Cairo will tantalise you. The film’s soundtrack may be the next best thing for those who can’t afford a plane ticket but you may also need to purchase a hookah (I said, hoo-kah!) to complete the experience.

FILM REVIEW: SALT

Sony Pictures
Now Showing

Who is Salt? That’s the question the advertising posters about town have been posing for weeks now, and as of this Thursday, you’ll find out. Or not. One of the pleasures of Phillip Noyce’s action thriller, Salt, is that for at least the first half of its brisk 100 minute running time, you’re second guessing whether or not Salt (Angelina Jolie) is indeed one of the good guys.

When Salt, Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative is accused of being a Russian sleeper agent with a mission to kill the visiting Russian president, she goes on the run, presumably in an attempt to uncover the truth. But then events (including flashbacks) lead you to believe that she may indeed be a Russian assassin. But then . . .

The key to enjoying these twists and turns is to not think too much about them, otherwise you’ll arrive at the plot twists before Jolie does. It’s best to suspend disbelief, as it is with any films of this ilk (Bond, Bourne), and just enjoy the ride.

And while some may guffaw at the preposterousness of some of the stunts, and probably more so because it’s a woman performing them, Jolie is certainly one of the few actresses who could believably pull off the action heroics required of her rogue CIA operative: leap frogging from one vehicle to the next on a busy freeway; fashioning a bazooka, Macguyver style, from a few handy objects.

Salt was originally intended as a vehicle for Tom Cruise but he opted out, fearing it was too similar to his Mission: Impossible films (another of which he is currently working on). With only minor tweaking, Jolie was considered ideal for the role. Anything the guys an do she can do hotter! The only whiff of sexism is word that a scene involving the rescue of Salt’s husband was excised as it was feared it would be viewed as emasculating. Apparently Bond can rescue a damsel in distress but even in 2010, a woman can’t do the reverse. The fate eventually dealt Salt’s husband apparently considered far better for his (the male audience’s?) ego.

Sexual politics aside, Salt is one of the few popcorn tent pole films of 2010 that has managed to deliver ie it’s entertaining without being stupid. Sure there are plotholes and absurdity abounds, but Jolie, in the hands of her The Bone Collector director, Noyce, who knows a thing or two about action having helmed Harrison Ford vehicles Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, keep it moving fast enough for you not to notice or care. When the smoke clears, you’ll know who Salt is – she’s a blast!

INTERVIEW: MATCHING JACK

20th Century Fox Films
Now Showing

This is an interview conducted with the film's director Nadia Tass and writer-producer David Parker. The interview also features in the August issue of Cafe Society magazine out this week.

A professional and marital partnership spanning more than a quarter century, Nadia Tass and David Parker know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. As a filmmaking team, responsible for two Australian classics, Malcolm (1986) and The Big Steal (1990), each has clearly defined roles: Tass as director and co-writer, Parker as producer, writer and cinematographer. But theirs is a truly collaborative effort and both agree that humour was the key ingredient for their latest film, Matching Jack.

When a mother (Jacinda Barrett) learns that her young son has Leukemia, she begins a quest to find a compatible bone marrow donor by tracking down the ex-lovers of her unfaithful husband (Richard Roxburgh) in the hopes they may have bore him a child. Matching Jack could well have collapsed under the weight of melodrama or emotional manipulation had Tass and Parker (working from a screenplay by Lynne Renew) not paid as much attention to the funny bone as the tear ducts.

“We read the original screenplay and then David started working on it, and he injected it with a whole lot of humour he knows I can direct,” explains Tass. “It becomes a Tass-Parker type of film, where we’re dealing with a very serious subject matter but it’s couched in humour, it’s delivered with entertainment.”

“We’re there primarily to entertain, and we’re working in a medium that has that ability to actually move people but you don’t want them coming out feeling dejected,” adds Parker. “We like the idea of taking them [the audience] on a journey but in the end you’re up.”

“What I hope is that the film resonates and there are many moments where people are thinking about certain sections of the film and reflecting on issues and, perhaps, it opens up a whole lot of conversation and thought,” Tass admits. “It’s [cancer] so much a part of our world today, we have to incorporate that into our entertainment world as well. Not that we’re going to sit there and laugh at cancer, we’re not doing that, but it exists so we put it into the mix as similar to what exists in real life.”

Matching Jack certainly has its heavy moments and doesn’t skimp on the emotional or physical demands of cancer treatment for all involved. But that humour keeps it from becoming mawkish. “I took the film to New York and Los Angeles and the screenings [with test audiences] were absolutely brilliant, the reaction was great,” Tass says. “We’ve had some test screenings in Melbourne and it’s good to see it with different audiences; there’s a laugh with a particular audience that wasn’t there with the previous audience.”

“It’s always surprising when you’re comparing the two audiences: there are some things that are hilarious to them [Americans] that weren’t even designed to be a joke,” says Parker. Those American audiences laughed in “80 per cent” of the same places as their Australian counterparts, which bodes well for Matching Jack, both here and abroad.

FILM REVIEW: SPLICE

Madman Films
Now Showing

“God schmod, I want my monkey man!” screamed Bart Simpson when his teacher Mrs Krabappel denied his request for knowledge to assist in his playing God and creating a hybrid, no doubt for mischievous purposes. Genetic physicists, and couple, Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody), presumably had nobler intentions in mind when they spliced some human and animal DNA together, but the end result in Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi thriller is no less demented.

With the threat of funding cuts, the pair secretly begin work on a cloning experiment using a mix of human and animal DNA. The results are more effective than they had hoped with the creation gestating at an alarming rate and once “born”, growing faster than the children on a daytime soap.

Within a week, Dren (it’s nerd backwards) resembles an adolescent girl although with some animal-like features and a bald pate; think a young Sinead O’Connor although when Dren turns things get decidedly more ugly than ripping up a polaroid of the Pope on national TV. Blood will out, as they say, and like all teenagers when they don’t get their own way, Dren’s animalistic nature kicks-in.

Natali’s film swings between serious sc-fi (Should man play God? Nature v nurture?) and schlocky horror, with a few effectively creepy moments and one scene, involving Clive and Dren, which is creepy for entirely non-horror reasons. But there’s fun to be had with Splice, and Polley and Brody, two typically non-Hollywood leads, have fun with it.