Many years ago, while I was in Mexico, I had the opportunity
to visit a true spa. There was a
swimming pool, hot tubs, mud baths, massage rooms, all kinds of healthy
concoctions, yoga, and an honest-to-goodness steam bath. I’m not talking about a sauna (they had one
of those as well); I’m talking about a marble room with fonts, fountains and
benches that was brightly lit but filled with dimming steam. You couldn’t see anything, and the steam
would work its way into your pores and you could just sit and bask it all in.
Heavenly.
This has led to my appreciation for holistics. I try to eat as healthily as I can, and I am
the first one to admit that I’m not always successful. I avoid medications when at all necessary, I
visit a masseur try a month (thanks, Luke, for not only being the best massage
therapist around, but for actually becoming a verb – getting “Luked” – in my
household), and I like listening to New Age music – lots of Yanni, Enya, Chris
Spheeris – in addition to the Pop Top Twenty.
There’s something to be said about going all natural (and au naturel at that). Finding that specific bond you have with
pampering yourself, and being able to take advantage of that “me” time, is truly
all important, gender notwithstanding.
Women get facials and pedicures, shop, and have power lunches; men drink,
go to a basketball game, or play racquetball and golf at the club and trade in
their undershorts for a towel.
So we here are at “For Your Movie Shelf, Chapter Two.”
When Tom and I first met, he was eager to help me embark on
my coming out journey. Indeed, when I
attended my first Pride event and was drawn to every booth, he delighted in
telling each individual vendor, “He’s new.” Whatever.
One of the things he did that stuck, though, was to broaden my horizons
by showing me gay and gay-friendly films.
Of course, back then, I thought a gay or gay-friendly film meant “porn”
(which, in all honesty, it can), but I was shocked to discover there were
actually artful films, with a message, that could have gay or what I’ll call
hyper-masculine messages and subplots. Bedrooms & Hallways fell into that
category as part of the “comedy-romp” category.
In the romance/finding yourself department, you have the Turkish-Italian
film Hamam.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Turkey is a country
rife with contradiction. Turkish film
has only really flourished in the past forty years, and it still partners
regularly with stronger studios of the West, most notably that of Italy. Italian-Turkish films are churned out with
regularity, and Hamam is one of
these, as it has both a Turkish and Italian cast. Still, although Turkish domestic films
routinely outsell foreign films, the output is few and far between. Many actors and directors in Turkey take part
in film only when they don’t have a project in theatre or television, which are
more popular. Distribution in Turkey is
virtually unheard of; many American film studios handle it themselves.
Hamam was released
in 1997, and to English audiences it was also broadcast under the title Steam: The Turkish Bath (Italy’s title
was Il bagno turco). It’s
set primarily in Istanbul, although there are some brief location shots in
Rome. Directed by Ferzan Özpetek, a Turk
who now lives in Italy, it focuses on the powerful transformations certain
places can cause in people. The film was
Özpetek’s directorial debut and was presented at the 50th Annual
Film Festival in Cannes, and was eventually distributed in more twenty
countries.
The plot: Francesco (Alessandro Gassman, a prolific Italian
actor best known to American audiences as the super-creepy bad guy in Transporter 2) is married to Marta, and
together with a business partner – with whom Marta is having an affair – they
run a design firm in Rome. Their
marriage, once the most important thing to them, has lost its meaning and become
a casualty resulting from their work.
Francesco receives word that his long-forgotten “black sheep”
aunt Anita, who has been living in Istanbul with a Turkish family, has died and
left him her property there. Glad to
have the distraction away from Marta and the firm, Francesco travels to Istanbul
with the intent of simply selling off her assets – which include a derelict hamam, one of the few traditional
Turkish baths left. Anita’s caregivers
Osman and Perran are worried about what Francesco’s actions will mean for them
and their children if he sells the hamam,
but open their doors and their hospitality to him in order to acquaint him with
Anita’s legacy and their own connection to the bath. Francesco ultimately decides to claim his
inheritance by renovating the hamam
and re-opening it to the public. While
doing so, he becomes aware of and reciprocates the affections of Mehmet (Mehmet
Günsür), Osman and Perran’s adult son.
Despite pressuring offers from Turkish business interests to
buy the hamam, Francesco becomes
unwilling to part with Anita’s dream and the new found relationship he has
discovered with Mehmet. His drive to
return the hamam to its former glory
reinvigorates the family’s neighborhood and delays his return to Italy, forcing
Marta to come to Turkey after him to ask for a speedy divorce. Once in Istanbul, she is surprised by the
change in Francesco: the hamam and
Mehmet’s affection (prompted, the viewer finds out, by Perran) have given him
the purpose of living again, and reminds Marta of the man she fell in love
with. The divorce loses its importance,
and although Marta now wishes to reconcile, Francesco cannot bring himself to
abandon the bath or Mehmet. After a
heart-to-heart with Perran, Marta finds herself redefined by the hamam just as Francesco had been and
what it means – not just to him, but to Mehmet, his parents, and the
neighborhood – and ultimately becomes the new Anita herself.
While Hamam isn’t
an underwear-good-time-with-great-guys, it is
a journey into self-discovery and the pleasure we take while we’re on the path. It also explores the fragility of love and
how it matures over time. On the
physical side, there are plenty of scenes with bare chests and towels, and the
viewer will appreciate the emotional contrast between Francesco’s stormy
relationship with Marta and the new found freedom and tranquility he finds with
Mehmet. And the film has an earnestness
to it, too, cleverly delivered and punctuated by the scene in which Francesco
and Mehmet are in towels, laying together, arm in arm, inside the bath.
I love this film. I’m
reminded of Hamam every time I go
into a sauna or steam room, because it makes me remember that feeling I had in
Mexico – nothing could touch me, nothing could upset me … I’d had my day of “me
time,” my undershorts were in my locker, and all I wanted to do was lay out on
my towel and let the steam do the rest.
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