Rent Luxor (2020)

An hour and a half of my life I’ll never get back - Luxor review by JF

I usually like Andrea Riseborough films but this was boring beyond belief - I kept waiting for it to get started but it never did - avoid

Deadly dull - Luxor review by Alphaville

“Slow burn” is an over-statement. Even at 82mins long including credits this seems to last forever. Lots of shots are no more than local colour as Andrea Riseborough wanders around Luxor doing nothing in particular apart from thinking in close-up. She meets old flame Karim Saleh and they wander around together. Thrillingly (!) they even meet other people and have conversations. In other words it’s another Sundance arthouse bore. Oddly there’s an even longer, even worse effort on the DVD that’s not even worth fast-forwarding through.

Haunted by past and present: meditative and mature character study in Egypt - Luxor review by PD

Writer-director Zeina Durra’s short but slow-burning film is a beautifully meditative, history-laden piece, one that asks us to consider how we reconcile our past experiences with our present state, and in turn how we wish our future to be.

Andrea Riseborough is pitch-perfect as the memory-haunted Hana; she's one who can decompress the present in the usual ways: rest, have a drink, commiserate with the friendly manager, even hook up with (and then avoid) a chatty American tourist, but on visiting Luxor’s temples and tombs, however, she feels the pull of past civilisations that struggled with life and death and sought to memorialise birth and rebirth. And when she runs into archaeologist and one-time lover Sultan (a suitably low-key Karim Saleh), their rekindling of a meaningful emotional and intellectual connection amid the beauty of ruins appeals to her past 'self' whilst at the same time bringing her reluctantly toward new choices.

Zelmira Gainza’s evocative location imagery is a bit predictable, whilst the soundtrack is an irritating distraction, but Durra is on solid ground in focusing on a psychological narrative in which the digging up of feelings is a gradual, contemplative journey, something sensed rather than made explicit. Riseborough is great at revealing her multi-layered personality, and her slow-walked reveal of a resilient woman’s vulnerabilities meshes well with Durra’s delicate attention to the antiquity and spiritual mystery around her. in a very modest, quiet mature way, this is impressive stuff.