Metrograph

Nayla (Sanaa Gamil), the much put-upon 40-year-old wife of an upper middle-class lush (played by Chahine himself), finds her existence upended when she starts to fall for a 22-year-old working-class student, Tariq (Saif Abdelrahman), in Chahine’s masterful melodrama of forbidden love and class conflict in the period leading to the Egyptian revolution of 1952, a peerless portrait of the bourgeoisie caste of Cairo as seen, unbeknownst to themselves, in the twilight of their venal decadence, featuring luxe, frigidly elegant photography that’s drawn comparisons to the films of Douglas Sirk courtesy of formidable cinematographer Abdel-Aziz Fahmy.

Distributor: Janus Films