A film with a title like Saturday Night at the Baths will give its audiences certain expectations. Somehow, this film subverts such expectations by depicting a heterosexual sex scene evoking Varda but you know, less good. We can file this film under the ‘product of its time’ microgenre as a queer film with a heterosexual centre. I’ll get to why this couple is on screen and why we care. See, the man in the relationship, Michael (Frank Aberdeen) accepts a job as a piano player in a 1970s gay bathhouse. The couple, then, strikes a friendship with one of the bathhouse workers, Scotti (Don Scotti).

The straight couples friendship with Scotti starts out simple as three of them do things like smoke joints. And of course, they kick Scotti out so that they can have another awkward sex scene. Eventually, the friendship exposes Michael’s homophobia, which is something that his girlfriend Tracy (Ellen Sheppard) isn’t happy about. But of course, the movie is so low stakes that all three resolve that major conflict. The film, simultaneously, is a window to New York’s golden age of prurience. My last visit to a bathhouse was long enough but its depiction of that culture in Saturday Night at the Baths is…different.

I’m still resentful that Saturday Night at the Baths doesn’t have someone queer in its centre. Also, maybe the fight between the couple irks me because the actors’ intonations are different from ones today. And that fight is still boring so let’s back up to what started it – Scotti’s virginity story, because if anything, this film shows that queer presence ultimately turns any space into a queer one. And back to the fight, middle of the road homophobia is so fascinating in my opinion. Michael feels a certain surprise that Scotti loses his virginity to a guy but like, duh.

Finally, I’ll stop writing about the boring straight couple on Saturday even if they are the focus here. The film does spend time in the former Continental Baths, showing it as a space where performances happen. Those baths are generations away from my experience where the closest live performance is…duh. My experience, despite the differences, made me question what I was watching, but I stopped questioning it. Of course, I know that Bette Midler started her career in places like the Continental Baths. And even if this version of the Continental wasn’t real, there’s a part of me that yearns for queer spaces that treats sex as one of the things instead of it being the main thing. I know those exist now but, you know.

Watch Saturday Night at the Baths on OVID.