Le dernier harem

Viewing the film Harem, makes one feel as if one were an actual voyeur peering into an actual Harem. Doorways and mirrors reflect to the eye what appears to be reality rather than an illusion created by a camera. As the Ottoman Empire comes to an end, the women in the Harem are frightened for their future. An old servant spins a tale to entertain and keep the women in the Sultan's harem distracted from what is going on. The story revolves around the Italian woman Safiye, who with the help of the black eunuch, Nadir rises to become the Sultan's favorite wife. The old servant's tale is interwoven with Safiye who weaves her own story to another Italian woman at a train station.

Do we always retell our stories as they happen to others? Stories are interwoven within stories, not only of what happens, but also what it is we would liked to have happened and wished we had done differently. As the Empire finally falls and the Sultan escapes to Europe, leaving all the concubines behind, the stories will unfold. What will happen to the ladies of the Harem, to Safiye, and to Nadir who deeply loved Safiye? The story is intelligent. The film is beautifully photographed. The costumes and interiors are sumptuous and colorful. However, the film is at times a bit hard to follow and there is a certain lack of warmth in the characters.

Harem Suare, tells the tale of the impossible love between the Sultan's prefered girl and one of the eunuch's (castrated harem servant) from the Harem of the previous Ottoman Empire. With his Occidental eye, Ferzan Ozpetek once again describes a mysterious place (as in "Hamam"), offering a "documentary of the soul" through a game of mirros, two-faced personalities, creating a cross-cultural confrontation on myth, sexuality, and language. Set in Istanbul in 1904, just before the fall of the Ottoman Empire and with revolution already at the door of the Yildiz Palace, it's the story of Safiye played by Marie Gillain(Mon Pere Ces Hero), an Italian girl who was bought by a pasha in the slave market at Cairo and given to Sultan Abdulhamit as a present. There, with the help of the black eunuch Nadir (Alex Descas), she rises quickly in the harem to become Abdulhamit's favourite. The Sultan likes to listen to Verdi's La Traviata, but can't stand the unhappy ending - so he asks Safiye to rewrite the libretto for him... Regarding The Last Harem the director offers these comments: "With a Westerner's eye I'm trying to unravel one of the most crucial knots of my original culture: the end of the Ottoman Empire, portrayed in one of the places dearest to the imagination - the harem:" Ferzan Özpetek became a film-maker after working as an assistant to Ricky Tognazzi and other Italian directors. His two features (Hamam, Harem Suare) to date seek to bridge the Western and Oriental cultures.

Strange film. The story of a historical "Fall", the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It makes you immediately think of movies by the gigantic Luchino Visconti such as "Ludwig" and "The Damned" (the original title translates as "The Fall of the Gods"). Dark colors, morbid atmospheres, perturbations, homosexuality open or veiled. And so on. And the story is good, well thought of. But unfortunately narrated too quickly and in a too confused way. To understand it (and again not completely) one must know well history and traditions of the Ottoman Empire, or at least of its last decades. What is really a Harem, which are the relationships of power between one woman and the others, why a very few of them become powerful and others remain behind, what's the position of the Valide, what it means for a woman to bear a male child to the Sultan, why exactly the small child of the main character is poisoned, why near the end the possible poisoner, the favorite of the Sultan, has to go with her son to Salonika? Because she must follow Abdul Hamit 2 in his exile, but one must know it by himself, the movie does not give any explanation whatsoever. All in all a good film, but could have been much better

When I think about this movie, all the adjectives that come to mind somehow relate to the physical appreciation of the world. Texture, smell, color, that's how I think this movie should be judged in terms of. See the rich golden tones surrounding the young concubine asleep by the fireplace, or the sweltering turkish bath, and let it flood your senses with impressions of spice, coarse cloth, smooth skin, scented oils, flickering flames, satin rustle. Don't just watch and listen, be absorbed, let the droning voice of the storyteller mesmerize you.

I appreciated the photography, the textures, the colours and often, unlike one comment, the lighting. What was lacking for me was a coherent storyline.I found it often disjointed, badly edited and at times difficult to follow. My version was 110 minutes, IMDb shows one at 125m. Possibly the cuts and subtitles didn't help. I applaud any films that escape from the Hollywood mould but this left me disappointed. Miss Gillain was luminous and the performances were all fine, I just wanted a little more dialogue. If anyone would like to see another film that has some affinity with this one, try 'Hideous Kinky'with Kate Winslet.