TIFF 2009: Films in review

Rita Silvan: You were wonderful and it was a delight to see you in Cairo Time. There is always an added quality to performances you have done. According to the press notes, this is the first time you have played a romantic lead in such a big way?

Patricia Clarkson: Yes, the first time I’ve ever carried a film. It’s rare for a woman north of 40 to carry a film in such a romantic, sweeping, dream-come-true part. It’s a dream come true, it really was, from the moment I read the script. I weary at first of travelling to Cairo as an American. Barak Obama is now our president.

RS: When did you do the film?

PC: A year ago, last summer.

RS: Things have settled now

PC: Things have settled now, but not a year ago. There was an enormous anti-American sentiment. I was treated so beautifully when I arrived.

RS: …So you didn’t feel like the “American.”

PC: No, I was not the ugly American, which I really thought I would be.

RS: You got to know Cairo two ways: as Patricia and also as Juliette. What was that like? Cairo, in of itself, is a character in the film, the third intricate...

PC: You took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, there is me, Alexander and Cairo. It was life and art imitating, at times, one another. You know I was a middle-aged woman for the first time in Cairo. And so often the journey Juliette was taking, I was taking right along side of her. The interesting thing is, what I realized is that I am not Juliette. I wish, she is a woman I aspire to be.

RS: I think you have a little more spark!

PC: I am firey, but I had to be reserved. There is a true kindness to Juliette and a patience; there is a calm in the centre of her. I have a fire in the centre of me.

RS: Did you find that energy challenging in Cairo?

PC: It was an awakening for me. As actors we so often think... First of all, we love a lot of bells and whistles and we love big dramatic moments to hang our hats on. We love to...

RS: Out on a show...

PC: Right. Juliette was so spare and so simple, the transition I had to make was molecular. It was so internal and it was so challenging in a way that I didn’t realize until I arrived at playing this character. Because I did not want to make Juliette me. I wanted to honour Ruba’s script and become this graceful, quiet woman.

RS: It’s very interesting because as the film opens, obviously your character is a little disoriented and jetlagged. There is this lovely grace about her; your character is polite to everyone...

PC: I never said “Thank you” in a film so much in all my life!

RS: You are being swept off and led and everything is kind of there. But as you point out, the change is molecular; it’s very, very subtle. What scene do you feel was the moment where she is over the jetlag; that moment of internal awakening when she realizes she’s in Cairo for a very long time without her husband? That moment when she recognizes that there is this other man in her life and he’s changing things for her?

PC: I don’t think she even realizes. That’s what I wanted to capture. She is a women who I think really accepts that fact that she is going to embrace the city, even though her husband is not there. That’s what I think Ruba achieves so beautifully; the incremental shifts you make when you fall in love. That it is deeply subliminal and it can absolutely happen without an ounce of physical contact. That it is that heart and the mind and often sometimes not the body.

More with Patricia on the next page ...

Check out our top film picks from TIFF 09