It's difficult to say why this film is so bad without giving away the shock ending. For the first 80 minutes it seems a beautifully photographed portrait of a small community within Istanbul that is endangered by the rush of time and progress, and the young man who tries to save a small piece of it. Then with little warning, or rationale from the plot, the lead character meets a violent end, literally out of nowhere. The male love interest disappears, and the cheating wife swoops in to claim the Turkish bath her husband had been restoring. It's pretty obvious this is a tacked on ending to make the film acceptable to the censors, and the audience in its country.
Review of Steam: The Turkish Bath
Steam: The Turkish Bath
(1997)
Beautiful imagery, hitched to crude homophobia
9 January 2005
Warning: Spoilers