Director Andrew Hahn makes a feature debut with Spa Night, his erotically charged, sharply observed coming-out tale.
Spa Night was the winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBT Film Festival.
The drama is a thoughtful and nuanced portrait of a closeted teen in L.A.’s Koreatown, a terrain never before depicted on screen.
Directed by Andrew Ahn, the film follows David, an 18-year-old on an exploration of identity after he takes a job at a men’s spa in order to help his parents.
It’s a sexy and substantive look at one gay Korean-American life, for which Seo won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance at Sundance.
David Cho, played by the handsome newcomer Joe Seo in a breakthrough performance, is a timid 18-year-old living with his financially-struggling immigrant parents.
Things change when he accidentally encounters a secret cruising place. Taking a job at an all-male spa, he begins to express his previously latent erotic yearnings that contradict the norms of his cultural context and threaten his life as a dutiful son and student.
Strand Releasing
Running time: 93 Minutes
In Korean and English