The tension between the grip of memory and the power of immediate experience is poignantly portrayed in this documentary-rooted drama, written and directed by Zeina Durra. It stars Andrea Riseborough as Hana, a British doctor who checks into a grand but faded hotel in the Egyptian city of the title, where she has gone to recover from the trauma of her work in Jordan with victims of the Syrian civil war. She has history with the city—two decades before, she took part in an archeological project there—and runs into an Egyptian archeologist named Sultan (Karim Saleh), a former lover who attempts to rekindle their relationship. Hana is open to his friendship but may be too unsteady for love; her self-healing involves extended wanderings through the city, as if to rediscover lost aspects of herself. The dialogue is thin and the action is patchy, but Durra films Hana’s travels—and the places that she visits—with an ardent attention that fuses emotional life with aesthetic and intellectual exploration.
That “ardent attention” perfectly captures Luxor’s essence.
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