“Sauna“Starts at the exact place you can expect it to do. Men twist and moan in the shadows just out of sight when a young gay man walks through the dark room at Adonis, Copenhagen’s only gay sauna. It turns out that he is employed there, but is still free to enjoy all the benefits that his workplace has to offer. There is no one asleep at work but sleeping around is only good. While that position (and the many others he is in) sounds much better than your average office, Johan is still not satisfied.
The pointless meeting after the meaningless meeting has begun to take his fee on him and echoes the emptiness so many young gay men meet when their social life in a new city consists mostly of sex and very little else. However, the script, co -written by director Mathias Broe, does not condemn it. Like the book it is based on (by Danish author Mads Ananda Lodahl), “Sauna” explores this without assessment and tells a story that is noticeable to someone who is familiar With the hypersexual world It can often come with a sauna of a gay kind.
Little Porees, as scenes where Johan Douchar in the toilet or randomly cleans up cum in the sauna, marks further film as clear queer in manner that a straight filmmaker could never understand. You can practically smell the lubrication and pops that are waving the screen. But “sauna” is not just another typical gay festival drama, just as random connections are not always as meaningless or empty as some may think. Johans told me early that he “will not find friends on Grindr”, and that is true, but what he finds is an even deeper connection that updates his understanding of love and gender in addition to his experience as a white gay man.
It starts innocently with a connection in Johan’s apartment. The man who visits is shy at first and sits on the sofa opposite his coat, even after they have shared a beer together. Johan goes through his usual script to help William relax, and it is not long before the couple starts to kiss. But when Johan’s fifting hands move to William’s chest, he has shot away. “Are you …?” Johan asks and realizes that William can actually be a transman. “I haven’t been with a trans guy before,” he says pretty naively. “Maybe you should have read my profile,” Caligns William, ready to leave.
But Johan pushes through the first difficulty and asks William to stay anyway. So starts what Broe describes in the press notes As a “reverse Romeo and Juliet”, where a forbidden love story develops into a love letter for the broader queer community and chosen family, especially.
It is something Johan is initially missing, although it is as much his choice as anything. He has a friend at work, in the sauna, and his older flatmate is also looking for him. In fact, this was how Johan got the job and his room in the first place. Yet he has closed himself for deeper connections in addition to how depth he can go in the sauna. William’s arrival changes it to open him with a tenderness that coincides with something beautiful and intimate, but also challenging.
It is in these intimate moments where “sauna” reason the most, whether the couple holds his hand in the morning after or maintains eye contact while Johan goes down to William. Broe’s function debut is not only the first Danish film that follows a trans head person, it is perhaps the first movie that ever shows testosuration (testosterone in a tube) lovingly and even sensually applied by one lover on another. William Sental Thanks to Johan with the gift from a dildo-stap-on-“it is so damn hot”-which we then look used in action.
At a time when Transphobia is also happy within the LGBTQ+ community, scenes like this speak to a more inclusive, loving reality between CIS and trans lovers who are almost never shown on the screen. It is important in the context of history and it is important beyond that as well, but Bro’s camera does not romanticize too gender. It is sensual and it is passionate, but it is also difficult and clumsy at points. Through close -ups that take us in depth, we see when Johan uses a pillow to support the ass while William Lubes dildo with extremely authentic and not for sexy wet sounds. (More proof that no one shoots a queer sex scene quite like a queer filmmaker.)
“Sauna” does not avoid the more challenging realities that a trans character that William would face though. At an important moment early in their prison, Johan takes his new lover to Adonis and assures him that everything will be ok. Broes script takes us through every step, from changing in the dressing room to going through and finding a private room for them to enjoy. William uses a towel to change while Johan gets naked, and he remains self -conscious even when he still keeps a peak in the sauna himself. It is not until they find a safe space alone that William starts to relax, just to be chased out shortly after by the sauna’s transphobic owners.
In the moment that this navigates Broes script (co -written with William Lippert) skillfully a rounded trans history that includes both the positive and the negative without leaning too hard on one or the other. These ups and downs are threaded throughout the central relationship that this film is hanging on when their emotions ebbing and flow with every new development. The chemistry between the two joints feels grounded in something real, whether they are tentatively explores each other’s worlds or blast their common world through eruptions and even worse, indifference.
Magnus Juhl Andersen and Nina Rask channel this intense dynamic simple – it is difficult to imagine that the film also works without them – even though I initially wondered why “sauna” prioritizes Johan’s CIS perspective of William’s Trans Pov. However, it turns out that this special love story actually reflects Bro’s own personal experience, as his partner began to switch during the film’s early development. It makes sense that “sauna” would be told by a power of attorney to him rather than a trans character outside his own worldview.
Would the story be more interesting from William’s perspective? Perhaps. But Johan’s prospects here are also quite unique in the current canon of Queer cinema, and it is important to note that the trans elements in the film are sensitive to be handled without losing the view of William or pushing its side of the story in the background.
“Sauna” may not end in the place you can expect or even want it to do, but that’s how love sometimes goes. And while it works on a completely different plane than more radical transmission such as “The People’s Joker” or “I saw TV -Glödet”, Broe’s work here complements a new wave of Queer cinema that authentically speaks to the trans experience, offers a unique but still Relevant love story that deals with the complexity of queer desire with shade and compassion.
Rating: B+
“Sauna” premiered at 2025 Sundance Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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