When you're young, flirting is an activity that dangles real promise, the possibility that with the right chemistry, a hook-up may happen shortly thereafter. But when you're older — married with kids, say, or just burned often enough to be sensible — the flirt becomes more its own reward. The adult flirt doesn't necessarily require consummation, but simply an acknowledgement of mutual attraction, that in another time, another place, it could have happened between us.

It's the slightest of infidelities, and a reassuring caress of the ego, but while a casual flirt at a party may pass as softly as a summer breeze, the more sustained ones run the risk of developing into a full-blown affair, with all the heart-wrenching, relationship-busting drama that comes with them.

"Cairo Time" zooms in precisely on that line where the casual — in this case, holiday — flirt starts to get serious, and it does so perfectly. It's a small, low-key film, mostly concerned with two people who don't express the thing that is on their minds, and yet Toronto-based director Ruba Nadda handles it with a warm, gentle touch, creating a portrait of almost falling in love that just about anyone will recognize, even if the film is being marketed as solidly chick-flick material.