There's a moment early in Sauna where Johan, our golden retriever of a protagonist, is cleaning semen off the tiles of the Copenhagen sex club where he works. It's not glamorous. It's not even particularly interesting to him anymore, which is precisely the point. A handsome man executes unattractive work inside an area which normally serves for enjoyment while I continued to ponder about how desire exchange always results in unequal outcomes. Some people get to experience feelings of happiness. Someone else mops up after.
Mathias Broe's debut feature operates on this tension throughout, though I'm not sure it always knows that's what it's doing. Johan works at Adonis, lives with his boss, and exists in a tightly circumscribed economy where his body is both his ticket in and his only real currency. He's stunning and everyone tells him so. The person never learns that people who want him do not necessarily understand him.
Enter William. The healthcare system creates administrative barriers which block his testosterone treatment because he identifies as trans and follows protective measures.
Their first hookup nearly derails when Johan realises William is trans and blurts out something stupid. "William tells him to read his profile before he leaves to grab his coat.
The brief statement delivered a powerful effect which reached all members of the audience. A person must present themselves multiple times before others will take the time to understand them.
The film is, in many ways, a story about who has to explain themselves and who simply gets to exist. Johan moves through his world frictionlessly. He has never been turned away from anywhere. The sauna visit which he arranges for William turns into his first experience with the system's boundaries when the authorities evict him. His confused condition produced an unexpected emotional response which I experienced. The film shows how privilege creates a form of blindness which makes him unrecognizable to himself.
The story of Sauna fails to deliver because it chooses to base its narrative on Johan's academic journey. The complete existence of William as Johan's development partner makes his personal inner world appear as if it belongs to someone else. "Johan asks his friend about hormone therapy but his friend replies "I just want to party."The film presents this statement as a gentle form of criticism which it accepts while demonstrating its limited ability to express itself. The complete story about William's experience contains a complex and challenging narrative which we can only see briefly.
And yet. The intimacy scenes in the film stand out as truly exceptional. The film achieves its impact through its depiction of vulnerability which it presents in a way that typical movies fail to show. Johan uses testosterone gel to apply it to William's body skin. The pillow repositioned to make an angle work. The romance appears through these moments which show its authentic awkward yet tender nature. The camera system of Broe recognizes that human bodies which move through space create their own method of communication.
Magnus Juhl Andersen plays Johan as someone whose looks have protected him from developing much of a personality, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. Nina Rask gives William a fatigue which seems proper because he has become a constant learning challenge for others. "William tells Rask during the final part of the movie that he wants to spend time with him but he needs to learn how to connect with his own self.
The lack of specific details about the Danish environment together with the incomplete depiction of institutional obstacles makes any difference. Probably. But I keep returning to that opening image: Johan in the liminal space of labour, the steam not quite hiding the transactional nature of everything around him. Sauna is imperfect. It centres the wrong person. It might be a better film from William's point of view.
The research examines which people can experience body comfort but others must fight against their physical body appearance. I'm not sure it answers them. I'm not sure I wanted it to.
