ScreenWize

There’s a well-worn complaint amongst actors that great roles for women over forty are almost impossible to find and, when they do emerge from the green-lit rooms of film production, they frequently involve the Demi Moore’s and Catherine Zeta Jones’ of this world playing women much younger than themselves. Whilst it’s not really been a problem for Patricia Clarkson – the darling of American independent cinema for many years – when she read the script for Cairo Time (written and directed by Ruba Nadda), Clarkson felt she had found a very special story about a woman of a certain age. “My agent called me and said ‘I have a stunning script that you are going to love,” she says from her apartment in New York. “I read it and I could see immediately that it was a gift, and I wake up every day and say ‘thank you Ruba’ for letting me play this part.”

Once you see the film, you‘ll understand Clarkson’s genuine and deep enthusiasm. It’s hard to imagine how she could have possibly turned the role down. Clarkson plays Juliette, a fashion magazine editor in her fifties who travels to Cairo to meet her husband Mark, a UN official working in Gaza. They are supposed to be there together for a three-week holiday, but when Mark is unavoidably delayed in an unspecified conflict, he sends a friend and colleague Tareq (Alexander Siddig) to show Juliette some of the sights of the city. The last thing either of these two people expects is that they will fall in love, and the emotion catches them completely off guard. Using Cairo as an exotic backdrop, it’s a beautifully understated work, built around the performances of Clarkson and Siddig.

The chance to spend a month or two in Cairo might also seem like a good enough reason to take the job, yet Clarkson is a self-confessed home-body. “I’m not that kind of person at all,” she says with a distinctive throaty laugh, “not that I don’t love the wonders of the world, but I don’t like to travel , and I would never, ever take a part because of the travelling. I took the part because it was a beautiful script. It’s an incredibly distilled love affair in a cacophonous, undulating city.”

When Clarkson discovered that it was to be Alexander Siddig playing opposite her – a Sudanese born, British-raised actor with impossibly smouldering good looks - she joked with the director about a re-write. “This is a modern love story that has no physical contact or nudity,” she says. “So I said to Ruba, are you sure don’t want to put me in a bathtub, preferably with Alexander?”

But it’s just not that kind of film. Syrian/Canadian director Nadda, who has lived in the Middle East for many years, and who has traveled extensively with her films, wanted to show a different dynamic – something akin to the introspection she had experienced as a traveller. “It’s a real love story, but one that is very un-Western,” says Nadda, “because to me the West is about acquiring, accomplishing, deadlines and running, running, running. The central character, Juliette, is suddenly forced to slow down and move on Cairo time.”

It was this aspect of Juliette’s experience that attracted Clarkson. “In drama, people think you have to undergo a seismic shift in character, “ she says “but while those are much more lively and noisy, they are not as rewarding. Juliette shifts in quarter inches, in ways that are surprising and that is a real challenge for an actor.”

But Clarkson was not working alone. The film’s success was always going to depend entirely upon the beautiful magnetism that must slowly emerge between Juliette and Tareq. Clarkson was only too aware of this risk as she headed for Cairo to start production. “With this kind of film, where everything depends on the chemistry, you really have to wish upon the stars,” she says. She pauses and lets out a knowing chuckle. “Trust me, I was praying for that before I left home. “ And then she gets serious again, giving a key insight into the workings of her director. “You know what really helped,” she says. “Well, great directors often give great advice. They see the lightness and darkness in a character that we see as grey, but the greatest directors I’ve worked with - and I’ve worked with some extraordinary directors in my career - create a conducive environment for actors to achieve the highest level of connection we possibly can without actually, truly falling in love or having sex off camera. A great director takes you right to the edge, and knows when to step in and when to absolutely leave you alone, to let you form those internal bonds and let those shifts happen that would happen naturally, which of course is best.”

In the movie, the first time Juliette and Tareq meet is at the airport, when Juliette comes off an elevator from her flight and sees, not her husband, but his trusted friend. Clarkson and Siddig only had a few days to work together before they started filming and Clarkson recalls the first time she met Siddiq. “It was a bit like life meeting art,” she laughs. “Alexander is a stunning man, and everything a leading man should be. He was waiting in the lobby of the hotel with Ruba, and I came down to meet them on an elevator . I looked at him, and then back at Ruba and I secretly said “thank you Ruba!”

Once they started working together, Clarkson and Siddig had to find a way to show the audience that terribly poignancy that occurs when the impossible and the possible open up at the same moment. “It’s the organic intention of the script to do this,” says Clarkson, “and for Juliette – it’s not just a normal affair, but a different kind of torn that she experiences, because she’s a happy woman and she has never had - in any way - an unhappy life. It’s just serendipity that she lands in this situation and discovers the intensity of this love.”

When it came to spending time in a strange and busy city, Clarkson felt an affinity with her character. “What I was experiencing as Patricia was the same as Juliette,” she says “but I had to make sure it didn’t blur because I am a different woman. Of course there are elements of me in this character. My heart and soul are there, but I wanted to make sure that I became Juliette, and not let Juliette become me.”

Filed Under: Interviews by Simon