Middle eastern promises

Patricia Clarkson on her brush with romance in Montreal director Ruba Nadda’s Cairo Time

QUIET RIOT: Clarkson

by MATTHEW HAYS

Patricia Clarkson is the undisputed queen of the indie film milieu, having appeared in countless low-budget hit features. She always gets good notices, but she’s also usually in supporting roles.

This past September’s Toronto International Film Festival presented something of a welcome shift for the celebrated actor, as she took the lead role in Cairo Time, directed by Montreal-born filmmaker Ruba Nadda. The film has Clarkson playing a married fashion magazine editor who ventures to Cairo to meet up with her journalist husband (Tom McCamus). But when he gets held up in Palestine, she spends some time with a close friend (Alexander Siddig) and the two begin falling in love. Cairo Time proved a hit at TIFF, winning over audiences with standing ovations and ultimately taking the Best Canadian Feature Award.

There are no small roles, only small actors, the old line goes, but Clarkson admits it’s been sweet to take on a lead role in a film. “Oh, of course! You want things to be demanded of you as an actor. You want a journey—that doesn’t mean you can’t take a journey in a small part. But it’s entirely different when you have the lead role. And as you age, you want more to be demanded of you. You’re ready for it.”

And though Clarkson gets steady work—she’s appeared in Woody Allen’s last two features, among many other projects—she knows only too well the pressures aging women face in Hollywood. “There are lots of mother roles. Lots of moms. Did I mention a lot of mothers? That was what was so great about what Ruba did with this film. She put a woman close to 50 as the lead. And it’s an incredibly subtle part. It’s deceptively difficult to do. Actors tend to love bells and whistles, we love big, tormented scenes, big moments or arcs. I love accents, odd clothes and odd shoes to wear. I love to walk different walks of life. But this character is really quite ordinary.”

Cairo Time is a sweet and gentle film that builds subtly as Clarkson and Siddig find themselves wandering the streets of Cairo together. They’re drawn to each other, but know theirs is a romance that can’t be. And that, in Clarkson’s word, is “agony” for them both. What’s great about Nadda’s film is the way she allows the romance to unfold quietly—many of the scenes have almost no dialogue.

Clarkson is so ubiquitous in the cinematic universe that she says she now gets recognized a great deal. Some have likened her onscreen appeal to that of Diane Keaton, in that Clarkson is vulnerable and endearing. “People find me accessible. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. But it’s mainly a good thing. I’ve played a lot of different characters, so you’d think they wouldn’t be sure, but people feel they know me. The downside of that is people think they know you so they want to tell you a lot about their lives. Like when you’re trying to hail a cab. I don’t know what it is about me, but sometimes people kind of think of me as their therapist.”

CAIRO TIME
OPENS THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 9