Jeremy Feight | Spa Night / 2025

frustration

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jeremy Feight (screenwriter and director) Spa Night / 2025 [9 minutes]

 

Kell (Jeremy Feight) is evidently having difficulties with his relationship and, in an attempt to resolve some of his anger and tensions, seeks out an evening of relief in an expensive Manhattan spa.

     Unlike the grungy bathhouses of gay lore, where, despite the druthers of the management as in Andrew Ahn’s Los Angeles spa in the 2016 film of the same name, sex regularly goes on or, in other such institutions, is permitted and even expected, here the employees astutely attend to their clients.

    In Kell’s case, he encounters three men, two boyfriends (Christian Duran and Wyatt Fenner) to whom he is apparently not at all attracted, and one grossly overweight man (Anthony Holiday) in whom he unexpectedly seems quite interested, director Jeremy Feight’s camera focusing for several moments on the perspiration rolling down his massive body.

      But just when that attraction might perceivably result in some action, a spa employee enters, reminding Kell that it is now time to immerse his body in an icy pool, the period of the immersion timed to a precise moment when his shivering body is pulled out.

     In the showers he again encounters the heavyweight, the two prepared, at least, to engage in mutual masturbation. But at that very moment, the two boyfriends, clearly attracted as a duo to Kell, enter, spoiling his sexual pleasure.

     As Kell exits the spa, he witnesses the beefy man walking off with a short woman and the two boyfriends almost dancing off hand-in-hand down the street. Kell calls up his former lover, having evidently rethought their relationship.

     What this movie has to offer regarding LGBTQ+ entertainment, insight, or excellent filmmaking, let alone why it was included in a series of short films heralded as “original” or “innovative” in the 2025 Newfest series, I have no idea. Frankly I found US director Jeremy Feight’s little film rather repellent.

 

Los Angeles, October 14, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2025).