''Spa Night'' is a 2016 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

directed by

Andrew Ahn Andrew Ahn (born 1985/1986) is an American film director and screenwriter who has directed the feature films ''Spa Night'' (2016), ''Driveways'' (2019), and ''Fire Island'' (2022). Early life Andrew Ahn was born and raised in Los Angeles. He is ...

and starring Joe Seo. It was shown in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the

2016 Sundance Film Festival The 2016 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 21 to January 31, 2016. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 2, 2015. The opening night film was ''Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You'', directed by Heidi Ew ...

. At Sundance, Joe Seo won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance.

Plot

David, an 18-year-old living in

Koreatown, Los Angeles Koreatown ( ko, 코리아타운) is a neighborhood in central Los Angeles, California, centered near Eighth Street and Irolo Street. Koreans began immigrating in larger numbers in the 1960s and found housing in the Mid-Wilshire area. Many open ...

becomes an employee at a spa to help his financially struggling parents. He soon discovers illicit gay sex between the customers, which forces him to consider his own sexuality. While this has been described as a coming out story, the focus is on the internal world of David, and his deep struggles and uncertainty, as a teenager, about how to be a good son but how to also be himself in what is a conservative family and rigid community.

Cast

* Joe Seo as David * Haerry Kim as Soyoung * Youn Ho Cho as Jin * Tae Song as Eddie * Ho Young Chung as Spa Manager * Linda Han as Mrs. Baek * Eric Jeong as Peter * Yong Kim as Academy Director

Critical response

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 96%, based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 6.80/10. On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

the film has a score of 76 out of 100 score, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Spa Night 2016 films 2016 drama films American drama films Films about Korean Americans 2010s Korean-language films American LGBT-related films Films directed by Andrew Ahn LGBT-related drama films 2016 LGBT-related films 2016 directorial debut films Asian-American LGBT-related films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films John Cassavetes Award winners 2016 multilingual films American multilingual films