Kaveh Nabatian | Vapor / 2010

transformation

by Douglas Messerli

 

Kaveh Nabatian (screenwriter and director) Vapor / 2010 [11 minutes]

 

In Mexico City a middle-aged man, Enrique Salgado (Marco Ledezma) who has apparently been long closeted, has just retired from his job is left alone for a few days, apparently without a wife and daughter, who will be returning so we gather from a phone message.   

 

     The film’s story, like its title which refers to the gay baths were this man visits and engages in gay sex, is enwrapped in a steamy vapor in which its difficult to perceive all the details. What has driven him to a sudden change in his life appears to be a telephone call from a famous photographer who wants to shoot him nude for a male magazine, an idea to which Enrique seems open as long as it remains secret. The photographer tells him that his “secret” will hit the newsstands next month. Oh, and one more thing, adds the photographer, he wants Enrique to shave his head.

    It is as if the possibility of both becoming someone else, a man now without a job and with an entirely new appearance, that pushes him out of his long homophobic fog, as he removes his wedding band, shaves his head, visits the gay baths, engages in sex, and poses for the photo shoot.

 

    Canadian director Kaveh Nabatian takes through the transformative day in this man’s life, when visions of himself as a child haunt him, and homosexual desires of all sorts—including quick glimpses into possible attraction to young boys and an S&M like sexual encounter—release him from the foundations of his previous life.

 

     We never discover what happens to this new-made man, although we hear of a middle-aged bald-headed man discovered dead, apparently on the streets of Mexico City, having been seen only an hour earlier. Is this Enrique? Has he ended his own life after his transformation, or is the news story only an emblematic statement of the man who has discovered himself in the past 24-hours, symbolic of the closure of his past life?

      No answers are given, but we observe throughout Enrique entering his new world with a sense of relief and purpose, curious yet relaxed as he slowly runs the razor over his full head of hair, fucks a man hard up against a wall, sinks into the hot waters of a sauna, and playfully poses before the camera. How it might all end is almost beside the point; he has already transcended the world in which he previously existed.

    

Los Angeles, November 18, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2023).