Main cast: Alessandro Gassman (Francesco), Francesca d’Aloja (Marta), Carlo Cecchi (Oscar), Halil Ergün (Osman), Serif Sezer (Perran), Mehmet Günsür (Mehmet), Basak Köklükaya (Fusun), Alberto Molinari (Paolo), Zozo Toledo (Zozo), and Ludovica Modugno (Aunt Anita)
Director: Ferzan Özpetek
What, No Turkish AIDS Pamphlets At the Door?
Caution: Hamam, or Steam: The Turkish Bath, is yet another foreign film and has subtitles. Reading required but the great acting pulls it through.
The Story
Francesco, whom we meet at the beginning of the film, is tired of his troubled marriage to Marta, who is spending a lot of quality time with her assistant Paolo, and his profession as a busy, successful interior designer in Rome. Then, he learns that a recently deceased distant aunt has left him property in Istanbul.
Francesco goes to Istanbul, hoping that he can sell the property quickly and return to Italy. He is surprised to discover that the property is actually one of the last traditional hamams (old-fashioned bathhouses) in Turkey and in great need of repair.
My immediate thought here was: Oh no! Interior designer meets old exotic house.
Now what do you think will happen?
The lawyer in charge of Francesco’s inheritance seems to dawdle and this frustrates Francesco, who is not used to the slow pace of the Turkish culture. Then the caretaker family, who has been running the Turkish bath for his aunt, takes him in and Francesco gradually rediscovers a long-missing sense of family as he accustoms himself to their life style. Some letters written to his mother that the old aunt left behind helps this rediscovery along. His aunt gradually, through these letters, explains her love for Istanbul and the bathhouse.
Aunty was a fag hag, oops!
Matters become complicated though when the caretaker couple’s daughter Fusun flirts with Francesco, but he is finding himself, increasingly and disconcertingly interested in her darkly handsome brother Mehmet.
Francesco struggles with his increasing love for the pace of life in Istanbul and his desire to have sex with Mehmet, and well one thing leads to another and they become lovers. Bringing up the interesting question: when does a married man suddenly decide that he is gay?
Francesco decides to remain in Istanbul for a while to restore the Turkish Bath and get his Mehmet on. The situation comes to a head when Francesco’s wife crashes the party carrying divorce papers. How convenient!
The ensuing arguments cause Francesco and his wife to re-examine their choices, but they also lead them to grow in unexpected ways.
I personally hate the complicated twist at the end of the movie. It was unnecessary for me at least and did not add anything to the picture or the story. I for one could have lived without it.
Turkish-born filmmaker Ferzan Özpetek gave us an interesting film showing the cultural differences between Francesco and his adopted family, and that is exactly what I loved about this film.
The cultural differences that extended to male sexuality were in full view. The husband of the caretaker family getting yelled at by his wife for staying out late with his “friends”. Interesting note: he ran the aunt’s bathhouse so he must know what Francesco and his son are doing. Right? The son telling Francesco about the aunt and how he was initiated to the hamams. This is a very unique look at the internal duality of the culture in Turkey and how it treats homosexuality by an unspoken set of rules, as long as it takes place in a certain way and only among certain age groups, obviously also as long as you get married and raise kids too. Fascinating topics that seem to be only hinted at in the most esoteric of sociology books.
Watching Francesco and his transition into homosexuality and acceptance of it should bring up a lot of uncomfortable questions about our own sense of self. All those labels we love to live with, one must be simply straight or gay and there has to be a healthy dose of contempt for anything ambiguous or seemingly transitional.
The other side of Hamam is purely a longing for another time in the gay culture that took place before the coming of AIDS. I saw this subtext right away. Let me ‘an old dinosaur’ say: at one time there were lots of places like these baths in America too. Some of these places were huge and had movie theaters and cafes along with the steam rooms and private rooms and well, you know, sex. I have never seen so many men or so many different ways to wear a white towel.
A long time ago and a galaxy far far away, anonymous men from all levels of society (straight, gay, and unknown) met and had sex in the same way as depicted in the movie and these bathhouses I remember provided the a sense of community among the patrons. The same as some of the bars we would go to several times a week. There’s a thought, a sense of community, but but but, those places were used for… SEX! Oh the sleaze!
Sex can kill these days making this whole bathhouse thing much more a visit to the desperate and the ugly, not to mention one of risk than a fun way to explore sex with only the annoying chance of catching crabs and we all know that a lot of the bar scene was all about the backrooms and drugs and the booze more than it was about creating a sense of community.
But there was something that a lot of people found just plain fun and I can understand the occasional longing for a time before the great plague that destroyed so many of us and the shared sense of freedom we used to have in these places. The gay community has lost something and the current climate of hip conservatism and the old farts using AIDS and their sexual hang-ups as examples of the only successful way to live. Well it sucks, I find less these days to feel proud of and less to enjoy about our fine community, or is that marketing segment now?
In Summary
Steam is not that revealing sexually, you get to see allot of skin but not much else, there is but one scene in this whole movie that even comes close to actual sex. It is pretty much just two guys in towels hugging, kissing, and sharing a cigarette. That should have the anti-smoking crowd screaming in the streets.
It is interesting to see even gay bathhouses had a much more ancient origination and one that was acceptable in society. I myself came out by going to a bathhouse *cough* Ritch Street Baths *cough* in San Francisco back in what now seems like ‘before the dawn of time’, or at least before my 21st birthday. In fact I worked in a bathhouse for a short time, yes that’s right, you got me, I am a sexual deviant. Anyway, I can understand a lot of the dynamics occurring in this film all too well and some of the reactions Francesco has to them.
Do these hamams have any cultural value in Turkey?
Do bathhouses hold any cultural value for gay people?
Are these places outmoded vestiges of a more repressed era?
Is the politically correct idea that since AIDS these places need to be closed and shunned for everyone’s health and safety or is it really because we hate the thought of people going anywhere in particular to explore their sexuality?
Interesting thoughts in this day and age. Not bad for a little foreign flick.
