To me, this movie is perfection.

The Age of Commercialism

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Fantastic!

Hamam is an Orientalist movie, reflecting the perspective of Western fantasies about the East, in this case Istanbul. Its director is actually Turkish but he filmed Hamam probably for a European audience, putting very delicate pieces of Turkish culture here and there throughout the movie. The traditional family structure, the neighbourhood dynamics, Turkish mentality of business and even culinary habits are elegantly displayed in order to present a lively taste of Turkish culture and daily life to the Western eye. However the movie actually flashes very little of the city itself. Other than a couple of boat scenes on the Bosporus and the final vista of the city, the filming locations do not include the highlights of Istanbul such as the famous mosques or squares. In line with the requirements of the plot we travel through the narrow streets of the Zeyrek area with very old and even ruined houses. As its title goes, the movie's most sound object is the Turkish bath, which has long been associated with sexuality, nakedness etc. in the Western literature and paintings. The position of Francesco as the propriety owner and therefore a kind of the new lord of Madam's household is in accordance with this general Western discourse of hegemony over the exotic Orient. The scene of Francesco's first encounter with Füsun was tempting the audience to imagine that she liked him and would like to have a relation with her new landlord in the near future. However Francesco, not very distant from this Mediterranean culture where men are used to kiss each other for greeting or being also an inheritor of the Roman world where homosexuality was considered normal, discovered his interest for the opposite sex. More than Mehmet's personal effect on that, apparently the general atmosphere of the city together with its people and culture, culminating in this historical and exotic space of hamam was the primary factor for Francesco's expansion into new sexual horizons. The cliché of "harem" fantasy mostly associated with the Turks and Istanbul itself pops up here again. The sacred private place of the Orient has always been regarded as a harem filled with multiple women as men's sexual servants. Similar to the centuries old European fictions like The Abduction from the Seraglio, the harem fantasy was a kind of European voyeurism into the privacy of the Orient, briefly reflected when Mehmet showed Francesco through a hole the naked Turkish women in the bath, which were supposedly shaving their body hair. Apart from such extravagant Orientalism, the movie also had more sincere moments of Turkish way of life to offer. The fortune telling from coffee, pouring water after someone who is departing, the "manly behaviour" of the Turks who spend time with football, playing Tavla and drinking was pretty much portrayed in a more realistic fashion. The relationship between Francesco and his wife was on the other hand a kind of the opposite of what was going on in the Orient. Marta could anyway hardly be a good wife in the eyes of the neighbourhood due to her skinny body. Her unfaithfulness was very mildly received by Francesco, but whether it was due to his modernized Occidentality as opposed to patriarchal Turks or his recent homosexuality adopted from the Turks was unclear. The tragic murder of Francesco was a warning to the European intruder of the potential dangers of the Orient which accompany its pleasures; but Marta's insistence on continuing Madam's enterprise with her aspiration in fact to turn into a Madam nevertheless ended the movie in the hope for the Western audience to realize its fantasies and ideals through an Oriental way of life.

This was a melodramatic and overly-romanticized look at traditions; both benign (the hamam itself) to the malignant (mutilating a child's' genitals). Other than the presentation of these traditions, we are left with little.The mood presented was consistent, but the characterizations were predictable..and frankly so was the story line.Perhaps the characters would have been more believable had they developed them better and provided a longer history for each--this would have given more plausible reasons for the actions and choices of the characters.There are many more films more worthy of watching.

The first 90% of this movie is an interesting and even thoughtful examination of an Italian yuppie who finds himself in a typical neighbourhood in Istanbul, and has to re-examine his life and the choices he's made.Unfortunately, this movie is the most egregious example of the now-trite 'surprise tragic ending' that some straight filmmakers seem to feel obliged to do whenever they have a gay character. It comes out of nowhere. All of the sudden, the last few minutes of the film are about the guy's wife, who nonetheless learns a valuable After-school Special style lesson about life. Yoiks.

I found this videotape at a local library's gay and lesbian section. However, there was only one scene that is related to homosexuality. The main character's partner can also be another female.It is really a nice movie about a person's simple life pursuing happiness. In this material world, sometimes people forget what the ultimate happiness is all about. It really does not matter how much one can make, this film showed that happiness is when you found something that you like to do.A good movie.