What’s the time in Cairo? Ultimately, who cares?

It’s never completely comfortable for me to be the outsider. OK, for the most part I don’t mind bucking popular opinion when it comes to liking or disliking popular film. My comments over the years regarding Michael Bay prove that.

But when what I think runs counter to what other critics think — and do so by a wide margin — I begin to wonder what’s going on. I begin to think, “What’s gotten into those people?”

Case in point: the film “Cairo Time.” Here are a few of the comments that I have been reading about the film, which I saw recently on IFC On Demand:

Joe Morgensgtern, Wall Street Journal: “(Patricia Clarkson) makes yearning palpable. She turns mysterious silences into a language of love.”

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: “It’s a haunting and hypnotic film. And Clarkson’s sublimely nuanced performance is in every way transporting.”

David Lewis, Houston Chronicle: “This is a poetic, romantic, emotionally complex film that sneaks up on you, particularly in its final scenes.”

And so on. Look, I like Patricia Clarkson. She helped make “Pieces of April” so watchable. Same with “The Station Agent,” the series “Murder One” and so much more. But in “Cairo Time”? I’m sorry, but her character is bereft of charm and so downbeat that she barely registers on the big screen.

Clarkson plays Juliette Grant, a woman who has come to Egypt to meet her husband. But he, a worker for the United Nations, is involved in a Middle East crisis and can’t get away. So Juliette is left sitting in her hotel room or walking the streets on her own (not a good idea), until she hooks up with a former colleague of her husband’s, Tareq (Alexander Siddig), with whom she gradually becomes close.

What the movie wants is for us to feel her frustration and to sense her growing dependency, not to mention affection for, Tareq. And his for her. That nothing ever really comes of their, uh, flirtation hardly matters. Something has shifted, and it’s pretty clear that nothing is going to remain the same. At least for her.

But … so what? The writer-director Ruba Nadda, a Canadian, gives us way too little to fully understand Juliette. Other than the fact that he has to work, and has the bad sense to let a handsome Egyptian man care for his wife, Juliette’s husband seems a decent sort. So what is her problem? Why doesn’t she just return home? Why does she insist on dressing inappropriately in a country where most women wear at least head scarves, if not full burqas? We never find out.

We only tag along as she and Tareq walk and talk and talk and walk and talk and talk and … you get the point. I can’t say that “Cairo Time” is a terrible movie (though my 31-year-old daughter wasn’t shy about making that claim). But it certainly wasn’t very good.

Feels funny, though, to be so counter to the critical tide. Makes me think I’m missing something. A romantic soul, perhaps?

If so, it’s a good thing. My wife didn’t like “Cairo Time” either.

Below : The trailer for “Cairo Time.”