In his feature debut, Sauna, Mathias Broe burns a laser focus into chasms among sexual and gender identities, sharpening flailing tragedy of incomprehension. Efforts, endeavors which one might think of as earnest could be entirely misplaced. There might be a vast abyss between projected empathy for another바카라s ordeal and their daily lived experience. Sauna peers unsparingly into this.
The twenty-something Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) moved from his home in Odense to the capital Copenhagen where he works at a gay sauna, Adonis. A string of empty hook-ups takes up his days and nights. Groping in the anonymous, cavernous dark of the sauna, a thrill of immediate sexual ecstasy is satiated but these are fleeting encounters, only a sequence of orgiastic moans and slaps. He yearns for a lasting, emotionally invested connection. It seems elusive until William (Nina Rask), an online date, walks into his flat.
It바카라s only when William requests him not to touch his chest, that the former is a trans man dawns on Johan. William tries to back off, amusingly asking him whether he even went through his profile. However, something clicks in Johan. He urges him to stay, adding he바카라s never been with a trans guy before. An appeal for another kiss inaugurates between them a relationship of curiosity, passion and damage.
A gulf in understanding looms intensely. It threatens to hijack the relationship at any given point. William is on a hiatus from his studies. He is saving up for a gender-affirming surgery and Johan gets sucked into helping him. The latter is convinced whatever he바카라s doing is solely with the best of intentions for William. Therefore, every seemingly over-reaching act, slippages in approach should be let off the hook. He steals at his workplace and gets thrown out of his convenient flat arrangement with his sugar daddy. Isn바카라t he so keen in his support? Why can바카라t William or his friends see and appreciate it? Such mental self-framing traps Johan, puts invisible walls in between the two. His inadvertent savior syndrome becomes a smokescreen for his own inner journey of reckoning. Unmoored as he has been, William바카라s complex circumstance gives him a glimpse of purpose, something he could channel his energy into and latch onto.
William insists time and again he needs time and due consideration. He is in a fraught process of figuring out how to be what he is. He might not as outwardly thrust himself into the relationship, but at least he is honest about his place. Even though he might love Johan as well, there are several battles he has to fight, his own personhood to sort out first before fully binding himself to the romance. Transitioning is his present, all-embracing reality, pushing everything else to belated margins.
As a filmmaker, Broe has no sanitizing timidity, or a cautionary, twitchy impulse that stifles artists from plunging into the mess. Adapting from Mads Ananda Lodahl바카라s eponymous book and having co-written the screenplay with William Lippert, Broe goes all the way in, unhesitant and uncompromising. An early scene sets the context of exclusion that Johan feels amidst William and his community. He takes William to the sauna, a space that is safe and easy for him to inhabit. But it isn바카라t one for William. The moment he steps in, he feels self-conscious, at a point of being edged out. Just minutes into intimacy, William is ordered to leave. He바카라s not welcome here. Trans phobia is unmistakable in the underlining of Johan바카라s boss that the sauna is just for gay men. Broe indicates it as pervading most spaces of hypermasculine gay meeting-points. Johan바카라s wrestling is one of de-linking from, outstripping received notions that swim in transphobia and biphobia. Difference in gaze, situational understanding, what it demands to just occupy one바카라s embodied selfhood linger like a sore ache, exerting on the lovers바카라 dynamics. Their dreamy spell of love and seaside idylls are shaded at the ends with inevitable, churning tussle of practical delineations.
Needless to say, Sauna rides on the heat and ache and push-pull its leads generate, especially Andersen바카라s ferocious, indelibly fearless performance. Broe stages their intimacy with unflinching erotic charge, a tactile sensuality accompanied by the pulsating human. Equally registers does the steady, skulking emotional aloofness, oozing from insecurities, bitterness and anguish over being cast aside. Some later scenes in this escalation feel a tad of a retread but Broe sustains a smarting electricity in his handling. Though Sauna unfolds from Johan바카라s perspective, it바카라s watchful, ensuring William steers the way of sexual intimacy. Castigating reflection refracts Johan바카라s narrative privilege. Nicolai Lok바카라s camera stays tightly close throughout, arresting Johan바카라s vivid hunger, stormy desperation and veering uncertainties, every note awake in Andersen바카라s performance. I haven바카라t felt so seen or heard in a film when in a scene Johan recounts the moment he discovered his queerness, its immediate upshot. Sauna lights a blaze. It바카라s unforgettable.
Debanjan Dhar is covering Sundance Film Festival 2025 as part of the accredited press.
