2024 Entry #016 01-12-24 “Steam: The Turkish Bath” (aka “Hamam”) is a 1997 Italian-Turkish-Spanish film by openly gay writer and director Ferzan Özpetek (“The Ignorant Fairies”, “Facing Windows”, “Saturn in Opposition”, “Loose Cannons”, “Magnificent Presence”, “Fasten Your Seatbelts”, “Red Istanbul”, “The Goddess of Fortune”, ““Nuovo Olimpo”). Özpetek’s debut film, the story concerns how certain places can cause powerful transformations for the people that find themselves there.
The film is centered on Francesco (Alessandro Gassman) and Marta (Francesca d’Aloja), who run a husband-and-wife design company in Rome. Both are struggling in their marriage as Francesco is bi-curious and possibly gay, while Marta is having a serious affair. When Francesco’s aunt dies in Istanbul he travels there to sort out the hamam Turkish steam bath that she left him. But Francesco and later Marta both find a love and warmth in his relatives’ Istanbul home that has been missing from their lives in Italy.
I had seen this once before in the mid aughts. I remembered very little of it except that I had enjoyed it. The film has an interesting structure and an ending that I wouldn’t have guessed, but I think this is in part because I’m not sure the film truly supports the finale and it feels a bit rushed. It could have been an exceptional ending had it taken a bit more time to get there, but as it is, it feels slightly flawed. When I originally watched the film it was part of a massive viewing of various LGBTQ+ themed films, just as I’m doing now, but then I feel I was slightly more impressed to see elements here that I’ve grown accustomed to and that I’m a little less impressed by now. The film still has a lot going for it, including an impressive cast, beautiful scenery and like other Özpetek films I’ve seen, a memorable soundtrack.
“Nuovo Olimpo” is a 2023 semi-autobiographical Italian romantic drama film by openly gay director Ferzan Özpetek (“Hamam” / “Steam: The Turkish Bath”, “The Ignorant Fairies”, “Facing Windows”, “Saturn in Opposition”, “Loose Cannons”, “Magnificent Presence”, “Fasten Your Seatbelts”, “Red Istanbul”, “The Goddess of Fortune”) who co-wrote the film with Gianni Romoli. The story centers on Andrea Di Luigi as Pietro Gherardi & Damiano Gavino as Enea Monte, two men who meet and fall in love in late-1970s Rome, only to be separated unexpectedly. The film premiered at the Rome Film Festival on October 22, 2023 and was released on Netflix on November 1, 2023. Elements of the film’s story were taken from writer and director Ferzan Özpetek’s own life and career. He stated, “The starting point of the film is a true story that happened to me in the ’70s and that for a long time I wanted to use as an inspiration to make a film.” Nuovo Olimpo was shot entirely in Rome, specifically in Municipio III and Monte Sacro. Principal photography began in November 2022.
I’d previously seen and enjoyed both “Steam: The Turkish Bath” and “Facing Windows”, but until the release of this film in late 2023, I had no idea they shared the same creative team. But when I learned that Özpetek had directed both of those films and this one, I was immediately interested in seeing it.
I liked this though I’m not sure if I enjoyed it as much as his previous work. There are some wonderful sequences here and I adore the music he uses, and many elements of the story resonate for me in interesting ways. But I had a headache when I watched this which got progressively worse throughout, and this affected my experience and how I viewed it. I generally insist on subtitles vs. dubbing when I view foreign films because I love to hear the languages but because of the headache, after the film started and I found it was dubbed, I chose to keep watching because I wanted to see the movie so badly but I thought reading all the subtitles while I was impaired would be painful. I don’t think this choice ruined the movie, but I do feel like it added an extra level of camp, and if I ever view it again, I plan to view it with subtitles on.
The story features two bisexual men, Pietro & Enea, who fall in love with one another but are separated. Throughout their lives they consider one another and are haunted by their past relationship, despite moving on and finding happiness with other people. Their relationship pops up in all sorts of ways in the lives they choose to lead and eventually they are reunited, many years later, but to what end? This resonates with me. I’m demisexual; I form strong emotional bonds with nearly all the people I choose to have sex with, which is why I’m not good at one night stands and I’ve dated most of the people I’ve been with. These people, mostly men, who have been part of my life and drifted apart, I’ve often used their memory to create art (which is something the Enea does here) – and this has led to reunions, however brief, which feature old lovers speaking with some of the same results seen here. The film is a fiction based on real life, and that is exactly what it feels like. There are meta elements which are interesting and add something to the equation, pushing the life as fiction narrative…which border on gimmicky, but are really just another side of the truth. And the film features several supportive female roles that I found quite moving, if a bit underwritten; I liked all of these women but I’m not sure I truly knew them by the end of the film or that I fully understood them – and I wish we got more of that somehow. It’s not a perfect film but it’s a beautiful attempt.
