Steaming

Five stars for this film of Nell Dunn's play set in an English council run Turkish bath on Women's day. There is some fine acting: Diana Dors steals the show of course for her sheer ability. Venessa Redgrave gives a stolid performance although there is nothing to stretch an actress of her abilities, and the rest of the cast give good performances. The whole film has an atmosphere of a BBC play for today and there is no real cinematic quality to the film as a whole. I really would not want to see this on the big screen. Perhaps this is due to the confines of the set: we see the plunge bath, steam room, hot room, exercise room, showers and rest room. And that's it. No exterior shots to establish the baths - all the action takes place in one location. The whole thing is simply a filmed play. Workmanlike but not inspired.The play however examines relationships between a number of women, mostly middle class.

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.

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.

This is an extremely unambitious film.Strange film for Losey to end his career on.Also rather ssdly the end for Diana Dors.She actually looks much better than in previous films where she looked blousy and overweight.Vanessa Redgrave looks like a fish out of water.