The cultural and artistic weight carried by Egypt can provoke emotions hidden deep within. The city’s crypts and alleyways are so imbued with ancient history and a strong sense of the past, that one might feel overwhelmed with a sudden surge of nostalgia. This sentiment permeates throughout Luxor, director Zeina Durra’s intensely atmospheric piece, which is akin to a quest into the caverns of the human psyche. Arriving ten years after Durra’s directorial debut, The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Luxor is set in the eponymous Egyptian city, which serves as a grand, majestic canvas for a contemplative journey involving love lost and found, trauma, hope, and nostalgia. Although helmed by compelling characters and sweeping visuals that brim with ancient beauty, Luxor is a disjointed drama that withers before bloom.

Luxor chronicles the arrival of Hana (Andrea Riseborough) in the 4,000-year-old Egyptian city, which is an entity in its own right, with its pharaonic tombs, hieroglyph-laden stone walls, and vast, sunkissed cityscapes. Having freshly experienced the visceral horror of the Syrian war as a warzone medic, Hana returns to Luxor with the hope of seeking refuge amid the city’s colossal ruins, whose primordial lull resonates deep within her. Despite being disgusted by the superficiality of American tourist Carl (Michael Landes), who views Luxor through the stereotypical lens of Death on the Nile, Hana sleeps with him, perhaps as a means of momentary diversion from her deep-rooted trauma. However, nostalgia arrives like a spring storm when Hana runs into an old flame, Sultan (Karim Saleh), whose presence excavates a deep-rooted yearning for the past, in which the world had seemed gentler, and love, more hopeful.

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Hana in Luxor
Hana (Andrea Riseborough) in Luxor

Saleh plays Sultan with nuanced sensitivity, exuding a charm that seems effortless, to say the least, which embroils Hana deeper into turmoil, adding layers to her journey towards healing and recovery. Perpetually stoic and guarded otherwise, Hana begins to blossom when around Sultan, as the two share a bond that appears neither forced nor contrived, fitting snugly like an old glove that offers a warm, protective halo. Riseborough conveys Hana’s silent, emotional upheaval with astonishing depth, as her wordless stares carry greater weight than the sparse dialogue sprinkled throughout the narrative. It is refreshing to witness Durra’s reliance on visual poetry for unraveling her mournful, ruminative mood piece, which hints at the fragmented history between the leads, as well as the city’s recent past as a European colony.

Cinema often mistakes self-revelatory catharsis as a single event of transformation, which in reality, can be a never-ending journey into the self, with repeated purgings of pity and fear. Luxor captures this notion through Hana’s road to recovery, which is punctuated with half-forgotten memories that both disturb and comfort, and the anxiety of uncertainty that pertains to the future. Despite weaving an ambitious yarn of memory, yearning, and spiritual turmoil, Luxor loses its way halfway through the narrative and appears trapped in its own narrative labyrinth. Luxor’s fatal flaw comes forth in the fact that it tries to be too many things at once - part romantic drama, magic realism, and travel manifesto - but fails to incorporate these elements into a compelling, comprehensive whole. While Hana and Sultan’s relationship undergoes a rebirth on the Nile, their guiding philosophies can often come off as abrupt or affected, further exacerbated by the segmented title cards that offer no true structure to a disjointed pilgrimage.

Hana (Andrea Riseborough) in Luxor

In essence, Luxor is a haunting meditative piece that dives deep into the folds of the human mind, which is often plagued with an otherworldly loneliness that can only be eased through a special kind of love. Despite its ambitious storytelling, Luxor often traverses into the territory of the unbearably pretentious and seems confused about its core identity, which can feel tedious for some viewers. While the indecision of the plot reflects the hapless existential angst of Hana’s mid-life crisis, Luxor moves further away from meaningful rumination as the film progresses, and ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

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Luxor is expected to be released by Samuel Goldwyn Films on VOD on December 4, 2020, in the U.S. It is 85 minutes long and rated 12A, as it is deemed suitable for those older than 12 years of age.

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