‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’ offers raw, intimate conversations among Estonian women in a sauna, discussing universal experiences with searing honesty.
By Al Alexander/Boston Movie News
As counterprogramming to “Sex in the City,” documentarian Anna Hints offers what could be called “Sex in the Sauna,” where a quartet of naked Estonian women kvetch in and around a remote firebath. It lacks the Manhattan glitz, high fashion, and those delish cosmos, but what “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” shares with Carrie Bradshaw and company is the gift of open and honest discourse about being a woman in the 21st century.
Not only do these ladies expose their less-than-perfect bodies, they also uncloak their psyches during eloquent exchanges concerning sex, abortion and domestic abuse. At times, it’s difficult to hear as the candor is cranked up higher than the sweltering heat. Beads of perspiration form, and hair goes limp as the women continue to stoke the fire inside a rustic shed in the middle of Estonia’s Vana-Vorumaa forest.
It’s literally filmmaking at its barest, and what makes it intriguing is Hints’ bold choice to redirect focus on faces to an array of breasts, hands, shoulders, feet, and knees. If we do see a mug, it’s often of a listener, not the converser, heightening the intimacy to a level that almost feels intrusive.
Equally captivating is Hints’ skill at manipulating light and shadow inside the sauna, creating what can best be described as a sort of live-action Rembrandt. Initially, it’s somewhat disconcerting to literally be in the dark as to which woman is talking, but you eventually get into the film’s rhythm. It’s a technique intended to emphasize what’s being said rather than who’s saying it. After all, these confessions are universal, not the thoughts of merely one person.
Even when the women step out into the light to take an invigorating dip in a frozen lake or bask under the warm sun singing humorous Estonian folk songs, it’s the group, not the individual, that’s the core. After a while, you even forget everyone is nude. It’s very much a back-to-basics approach.
Much of what is relayed is funny, but what penetrates are the searing revelations. One woman relives the difficulty of coming out to her straight-laced parents, while another wrenchingly describes the incapacitating fear that gripped her after a cancer diagnosis. Perhaps the most riveting moment occurs during a recounting of the brutal beatings inflicted on a relative by a brutish husband. That one induces chills, adding to the sense of feeling as much a part of the conversations as the woman engaging in them.
By the end, the many images of steam, smoke, and fire reveal a striking metaphor for the participants in what we learn is a centuries-old practice of purifying the soul. Does it work? I cannot say, but it certainly makes you sweat.
‘Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’
Rated: Unrated
Director: Anna Hints
Runtime: 89 minutes
Where to watch: Available to rent via video-on-demand or see it at 1 p.m. Feb. 24 at the Scandinavian Cultural Center in Newton or The VU Cinema Cafe in Jamaica Plain.
Grade: B
Boston Movie News 