Spa Night

Ahn’s erotically charged, quietly devastating drama suggests David might yet find a way to be true to himself, but it finds no easy answers for this good son.

There have been upbeat coming-out films (But I'm a Cheerleader) and tragic, infuriating ones (Boys Don't Cry, Brokeback Mountain). Andrew Ahn's Spa Night is executed on a significantly smaller scale, a deliberately anticlimactic one, which makes it all the more doleful.

Spa Night takes too much time to portray David's achingly slow and incomplete coming-out process, but its focus on the interior maelstrom of a teenager is extremely insightful

Though it leaves too many narrative blanks unfilled, Spa Night is a promising debut from a filmmaker with a lot of insight into the different guises that immigrants and their offspring wear as they make their way through the world.

Spa Night serves as an homage to the sacrifices first-generation immigrants made in order that their children could achieve their full potential in the States, expanding the concept of “pride” far beyond its protagonist’s gay identity.

The beautifully lensed drama is, like its protagonist, compelled and often obsessed by the human shape and form, and Ahn’s film artfully uses the physical to tell a mostly standard issue coming-of-age story with style.

It’s nice that Spa Night has a story with a different kind of protagonist than what we’re used to, but it tells that story with all the lackluster waffling of any other shaky indie drama.