STEAM
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Strand Releasing Director: Ferzan Ozpetek Writer: Ferzen Ozpetek, Stefano Tummolini Cast: Alessandro Gassman, Francesca D'Aloja, Carlo Cecchi, Halil Ergun, Serif Sezer, Mehmet Gunsur, Basak Koklukava, Alberto Molinari, Zozo Toledo, Ludovica Modugno
Pop psychologists say that you can't get away from yourself; that no matter where you travel, you always have yourself for company, and so a neurotic in Canada will be disturbed in Australia. Director Ferzan Ozpetek, using a script he co-wrote with Stefano Tummolini, challenges that prevalent belief. In "Steam," an Italian-Turkish co-production known as "Hamam" in Turkish and "Il Bagno Turco" in Italian, workaholic Franceso (Alessandro Gassman) makes a business trip from his office in Rome to a neighborhood in Istanbul, falls in love with the history-saturated city, and resolves to stay for a while. He becomes a hero to the working-class folks in the neighborhood by saving their homes. But does the city change him as well? Unequivocally so. So much does Francesco evolve from an uptight designer who finds nothing strange about taking cellular phone calls at the dinner table that even his termagant wife grows to like him.
The story, which contains elements of melodramatic Italian opera, has mythic resonance, entailing the role of fate and family history and reflecting the cultural duality of its director. The bilingual Ferzan Ozpetek, who is at home in the manners of Turkey and Italy, has fashioned a fable-like narrative about characters from two distinct civilizations who alter one another profoundly in the course of a few weeks, empathizing with one another even before they have gained sufficient vocabulary for reasonable verbal communication. When Francesco receives word from the Turkish Embassy in Rome that he has inherited some property from his recently deceased expatriate aunt, he flies to Istanbul fully expecting to sell off the land at the best price he can get and return home. When he discovers, however, that the buyer is intent on devouring and displacing an entire neighborhood, he reconsiders his options. After learning that the business bequeathed to him is a defunct Turkish bath, he resolves lovingly to refurbish the place with the help of a band of new friends he has acquired. Though the 19-year-old Fusun (Basak Koklukava) flirts openly with the handsome Italian, Francesco ultimately pairs off with another man, Mehmet (Mehmet Gunsur), who has introduced the staid businessman to the pleasures of his flesh, the relaxing steam of the Turkish bath serving as an aphrodisiac. When Francesco's wife Marta (Francesca D'Aloja), a buttoned-down woman who has enjoyed a two-year affair whenever she could get away from her husband, discovers Francesco in flagrante, she is at first furious but ultimately accepting of the new man which the Istanbul environs have made of him.
Before tragedy strikes, photographer Pasquale Mari takes us on a tour of the renowned city, setting his camera on a ferry that cruises the Bosporous; one of the major bazaars of the town; a circumcision ceremony involving two boys of about seven who "become men" without the benefit of anesthesia in a ceremony complete with belly dancers; a dining table which features the delicies of Armenia and Turkey in a thoroughly amicable family setting; and to the hilly, residential streets surrounding the once-prominent hamam. Any in the audience with the preconception that Muslim countries are alike in their sexual repressiveness will be set straight by indications of a tolerance of homosexuality and the open participation of women in dance, physical work, and high finance. Alessandro Gassman does a credible job of changing his character virtually overnight while as his argumentative wife, Francesca D'Aloja projects a similar metamorphosis during her own short visit to the country.
It's easy to see why the Turkish government and people would be eager for Americans to see a movie which glorifes their country to such an extent that it appears like a modern Shangri-La. The one scene involving the physical affection which Francesco has developed for Mehmet is so fleeting and in such good taste that few liberal Muslims could possibly object. Supporting performers like Zozo Toledo as an intermediary handling the affairs of the bath and Basak Koklukava as a woman who decides she will marry only for love add depth to this tale, which shows that even as much of Europe has given up the manana attitude for the rat race, there are still large pockets of land where a laid-back attitude can have a salubrious effect indeed.
Not Rated. Running time: 94 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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