Film Festival Reviews

2020 AFI FEST Review: Andrea Riseborough Wanders Through A Gilded Ghost Town In Zeina Durra’s Somnambulant “Luxor”


 

When British aid worker Hana returns to the ancient city of Luxor, she meets former lover Sultan. As she wanders, haunted by the familiar place, she struggles to reconcile the choices of the past with the uncertainty of the present.

Zeina Durra’s minimalist drama “Luxor” requires patience. It’s in no rush to get anywhere. The film – which feels significantly longer than its 80 minutes – is neither about the journey nor its destination. Emotions are internalized, all manner of conflict subdued. In that sense, it becomes a sort of meditative travelogue, and if you’re in the right mood, it will transport you, along with its protagonist, to that surreal, transformative place where ghosts of humanity’s ancient pasts linger and whisper inaudibly. Don’t strain too hard to hear what they’re saying. Just enjoy the melancholy and the beauty of it all.

The place in question is the titular ancient city in Egypt, and the protagonist is Hana (Andrea Riseborough), a “broken” British aid worker, who confesses to having “been to a dark place that nobody should see.” Perhaps Hana’s journey to Luxor will bring her much-needed salvation. She wanders around, takes in the sights, feeling an otherworldly connection to each granule of each prehistoric stone that she sees.

I wish I could say that complications arise when Hanna bumps into her dashing ex-lover – and renowned archaeologist – Sultan (Karim Saleh), but they don’t. The couple keeps wandering around together. He asks her if she has someone, “a lover, a husband or a boyfriend,” clearly still infatuated by the sullen woman.

Lighted by man-made orange-hued projections, the gargantuan statues of Luxor dwarf our heroes as they roam. “I forgot how pregnant this place is with the history of things being here, with us,” she comments. “You’re walking in a place that has thousands of years of human emotion,” she is told by another fellow archaeologist. There are moments when it feels like it would take the same amount of time to get through “Luxor.”

The filmmaker is clearly as infatuated with Luxor’s ruins as Sultan is with Hana. Her cinematographer, Zelmira Gainza, captures haunting, majestic shots of the city and its sights. It may not be exactly a thrill-a-minute (or a thrill ever) ride, but Durra’s erudition and passion buoys the whole affair. “The more unstable the world is, the more the supernatural comes to the forefront,” Hana tells Sultan, in an example of the sort of things the film ponders. Ultimately, it’s about conquering inner demons and offering them as a blessing to the divine, which may be exactly what Hana does towards the film’s nerve-shredding (hah!) culmination.

Andrea Riseborough has always been known for selecting unconventional, interesting projects (she’s currently also starring in Brandon Cronenberg’s shocker “Possessor”), and here she’s radiant again. “Don’t live in the past?” she sneers at Sultan’s advice. “You’re an archaeologist!” The film’s highlight sees her perform an impromptu dance as if guided by otherworldly forces, before collapsing in a heap of tears. Karim Saleh charms but is left as somewhat of a mystery towards the end.

As an avid traveler, I enjoyed basking in the atmospheric “Luxor,” even as I wished there was more to it. If nothing else, it will make you yearn to travel and explore, to seek some sort of salvation, some meaning to it all. I’m sure visiting the real Luxor would provide you with some answers – watching Gainza’s film surely does not.

 

“Luxor” recently premiered at the 2020 AFI FEST

 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Alex Saveliev

Alex graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a BA in Film & Media Arts and studied journalism at the Northwestern University in Chicago. While there, he got acquainted with the late Roger Ebert, who supported and inspired Alex in his career as a screenwriter and film critic. Alex has produced, written and directed a short zombie film, “Parched,” which is being distributed internationally and he is developing a series for a TV network, and is in pre-production on a major motion picture.