Copa 181

By: Amos Lassen

"Copa 181"
Revisiting the Gay Sauna
Amos Lassen
There was a time when a town's bathhouse was the site for many different occasions including business deals, mortgages, loans and what have you. Usually situated on a major square in town, it was a place everyone knew of and to which many people frequented. Plumbing changed and people had bathrooms in their homes but public bathhouses continued to flourish although not so much in this county where bathhouses were thought to be havens for gay sex, which in some cases they were. "Copa 181" is set in a gay sauna much like the old Continental Baths in New York City. Here there was no pretense; it was a place where groups of strangers came looking for anonymous sex and/or company for a few hours. Copa 181, located in Rio in a corner of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio was also a site for high drama. There we meet Tana, a hardware shopkeeper and his wife Eros who stops by every once in a while. She is an opera singer who finds acceptance for her incredible gift at the bathhouse. Joining them are a men ready to pay for the muscle-bound escorts. There is Leo who is happy with his trans girlfriend Kika but only within the physical confines of the sauna. Kika is a housecleaner by day and an entertainer by night and she dreams of becoming. Star and often feels that she already is. Everyone at Copa 181 comes "under the joint spell of the sex and escape from mundane reality the bathhouse offers". Watching this film will also pull you under that same spell. Director Dannon Lacerda uses the theme of chosen family but this time at a sauna. Speaking of drama, just wait until you see what happens between Tana, Eros and Kiki.