Sauna Sundance Review: Explicit Love

Where Sauna succeeds in depicting fearlessly queer relationships, it stumbles in crafting a compelling narrative around them.

Johan (Magnus Juhl Andersen) is an openly gay man working at Copenhagen’s only gay sauna. When he’s not pursuing the sauna’s clientele, he’s hooking up and having one night stands with random men at the bars. One night of browsing Grindr leads to Johan meeting William (Nina Rask), a trans man, at his home. But Johan is so sexually motivated that he doesn’t even realize that William is trans until they begin hooking up – he didn’t read his profile at all – which leads to an awkward uncertainty.

Nevertheless, Johan and William begin seeing more and more of each other, and a casual romance evolves. Despite a push back from the sauna because of their strict “gay men only” policy, which excludes trans men and women, we’re never really in doubt of Johan’s commitment to William. Thankfully this is one of the few instances of homophobia within Sauna; the hetero community is like a far-off rumor, so the film can focus more on the internal struggles relevant to LGBTQ+ people. Even Johan’s landlord never questions Johan’s self-destructive lifestyle.

What’s perhaps more frustrating about Sauna is that we never really learn more about Johan outside of his relationships – both physical and emotional. We see a few snippets early on about Johan’s life before moving to the city, but Sauna spends little time talking about his childhood or relationship to his family. Andersen is fully committed to everything that screenwriters Broe and William Lippert ask of him, including the numerous explicit sex scenes, but there isn’t nearly as much depth to the character as there should be. Rask and Andersen are genuine and warm when on screen together, even when their relationship is new and they’re still feeling each other out to see how they tick.

Sauna’s second half gets a little more compelling when it focuses on William’s ongoing transitional journey. Until he can be officially prescribed hormone therapy, he’s forced to use leftover testosterone from friends. The red tape which trans men and women face in Denmark is an unfortunate reality (though, in the world of the film, at least their government isn’t as openly hostile to the very existence of trans people as in America), and it’s a thoughtful decision on Broe’s part to include these bits. The uncertainty causes rifts between William and Johan, either from Johan’s misunderstanding of the seriousness of William’s situation, or from Johan’s aggressive tactics to help. But even then, there’s little doubt that their relationship won’t survive.

Though high-profile films like Queer and Passages have featured unflinchingly honest gay sex scenes, it’s no less notable for it to be depicted as Broe does here. Whether it’s at an international film festival like Sundance, a major studio release, or a VOD drop, movies like Sauna are less common than the movie-going public might believe. There’s a very good film to be found buried within what we have here, but for now it’s hard not to be left wanting more.

Sauna had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2025.