Idylle au Caire: A Trip Back to Old School Romance

If you are looking for something to put on while you fold laundry or just want to see what people thought was 'exotic' in the early thirties, Idylle au Caire is right up your alley. If you need grit, intense stakes, or anything resembling modern pacing, you are going to be checking your watch every ten minutes. It is basically a stage play that decided to take a vacation in Egypt.

The whole premise is classic: two young people realize their widowed parents are lonely, so they start pulling strings to force a connection. It’s sweet, I guess, but mostly it’s just an excuse to have characters walk around looking wistful in nice outfits. You can tell they filmed the French version alongside the German one, because there is this weird, slightly mechanical feeling to how everyone hits their marks. It’s like watching people perform a dance they’ve already done a hundred times that morning.

Renate Müller is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. She has this way of looking at the camera that makes you feel like she knows exactly how silly this all is, but she’s playing along anyway. Some of the background shots of Cairo are actually pretty lovely, even if they clearly didn’t have the budget to do more than a few wide establishing shots before cutting back to the studio sets. The sets themselves have that painted-backdrop look that I honestly find kind of comforting.

There is a scene near the middle where they are just chatting on a terrace and the dialogue goes on for way longer than it needs to. It’s not profound, it’s just... filler. But then, every once in a while, someone makes a sharp, witty remark that reminds you why this genre exists in the first place.

It definitely lacks the snap of a real screwball comedy, though. If you want something that actually moves with a bit of purpose, maybe go watch Footlight Parade instead. That movie has a kind of kinetic energy that this one just can't seem to find, no matter how hard the actors try to look busy.

Still, it’s not an unpleasant way to spend an hour. There’s no malice in it. Nobody is trying to reinvent cinema, and that’s fine. Sometimes you just want to see people in fancy hats falling in love in the desert. 🌴

• The lighting is surprisingly soft for the era.
• The kids are way more meddlesome than any real children would ever be.
• The way they handle the 'international' cast is a bit of a mess, honestly.
• The music is exactly what you expect—lots of strings and very little surprise.