> ***Trying Too Hard to be Deep🥴***
***Art for art’s sake** is a nice concept on paper, but it rarely does anything for the actual audience. These days, there’s a desperate urge in conservative societies to prove they’re **modernizing**, and the go to move is to pick a taboo topic usually **sex** and dress it up in some pretentious, overly artistic packaging. It’s an easy way to grab attention, but it doesn't make for a good movie.
The director of **Café Regular, Cairo** clearly thinks that just talking about sex is enough to make a film feel groundbreaking. It’s like he’s trying to channel the vibe of **Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andree**, but he completely misses the mark. The film opens with the most stale, banal conversation about divorce you could imagine it’s like hearing stuff we’ve all heard a million times before.
Then there’s the casting. Honestly, the chemistry between the two leads is non exxistent. The guy doesn't show an ounce of genuine affection, and the whole **romantic** dynamic feels more like two college kids playing hooky at a cheap café than an actual couple.
I spent the whole film wondering: **what’s the point? People get married and have kids in conservative countries all the time without making a big production out of it. Why go to a random, dingy café just to have this awkward, forced talk about physical intimacy? **The film never gives you a reason, it’s obsessed with the idea of telling a story about **sex**, but it has no idea why it’s telling it in the first place.
At the end of the day, this is the textbook definition of **art for art’s sake** It’s a film for people who want to feel superior by pretending they gget something that, in reality, is just empty and pretentious
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