Steaming

Though it belies its stage origins this character study of a group of women who find a camaraderie in the local ladies steam bath that isn't available to them anywhere else keeps you involved thanks to Losey's firm directorial hand and superior performances by the cast.

The showpiece performance is from Patti Love as the combative Josie but both Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles score sharply in more muted roles. This was the final film for Diana Dors before her far too early death and it provides her a lovely opportunity to exit on a fine grace note. Her fabled beauty while not a memory had by this point softened into a mature softness filled with character. As the motherly Violet she shows that the stunning good looks of her youth weren't all she had to offer.

I have not noticed a lot of British nudie cutie films make the hop over the pond. I was not expecting many either, given the Brit's public persona as being presented as very reserved (Benny Hill not withstanding).

What a pleasant surprise to see this film about some rather good looking older and a few good looking, but kind of plump, younger women, letting it all hang out while going around a lot in their starkers!

The director managed to make the nudity both titillating and non-exploitive at the same time--This was not too hard considering the caliber of the acting talent involved. And the fact that no men appeared anywhere in the film probably made it more of a "lets hide a camera in a women's steam club and see what they really talk about!". Surprise--it's men! No feminine hygiene, breast cancer, yeast infections, or even babies!

The one thing about the limeys is that even when they don't do something often, they do it right! Rather old bean, top drawer!

Patti Love's often unbearable performance, during the first two acts of «Steaming», almost ruins Joseph Losey's final film. Nell Dunn's play decidedly must work much better on a theater stage, where the distance between the audience and the play being performed, where the sort of single frame with the same size and same gaze position that becomes the stage, and where the direct voices coming directly from actors' bodies, create conditions that make us take some poetic intimacy in the midst of the prosaic rawness of the representation, and make more tolerable sudden outbursts of intense drama out of the blue, for the simple fact of being in front of a live performances. As captured by a camera, and as set up in shots of different scales and angles, in an almost pointless intent to give some kinetic life to what is, in the end, nothing more than the filmization of a theater piece, it only stresses the artificiality of what we are watching. In compensation for this strange kind of cinematic product, there are fine and controlled performances by Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, and Brenda Bruce as clients, and Diana Dors (in her last film) as manager of an old Turkish bath in London, where regular female customers meet and exchange facts about their lives, in spite of their class differences. Love, as an amoral stripper addicted to brute men, and Felicity Dean as Bruce's teenage (and apparently mentally ill) daughter are in charge of the hysterical scenes. There is not much going on in Aristotelian terms: this is more a confessional kind of drama, where stories, emotions and morals are shared. Only when Dors breaks down as she informs that the bath is going to be demolished for the construction of an entertainment center (or mall), the action follows a more traditional structure. According to drama conventions, it is Love's Josie, the character whose change is more significant. Her performance is built on scenes where she delivers diatribes of social resentment, sexual gossips, and screeching, until the moment her character becomes the spokesperson of the group and the tone changes. In any case, even when the sense of human existence is often crushed, there is a positive and joyful sense of life that, besides the opportunity of seeing women interacting (and such a good cast playing them), makes the viewing rather amenable. It is also a respectable ending for the careers of a remarkable director, and of cinematographer Christopher Challis, both taking good advantage of the single set.

It's not that the whole movie is filled with unusual dialogue but half the time it feels as if there aren't conversations happening but monologues. I understand it's based off a play but that's what you have to do when adapting a play to a film.

Makes it hard to follow when you don't really care about half of what's being said.

While this is not a real great piece of film making, I found it to be erotic in a very subtle sort of way. First, the whole concept of a movie about 40ish and 50ish women hanging out (in more ways than one) at spa is very exciting to me. Then add the fact that we have established actresses like Sarah Miles and Vanessa Redgrave spending a lot of time lying around in towels and less and you have a very erotic film in my opinion. I really hated to see it end. If you find this concept much more sexy that overt sexuality, then you might want to check out this film. It's hard to find, though. I found it in a small independent video store in 1987 and haven't come across it since.