Jhi-Han Yu | Gentleman Spa / 2019

a desire to touch

by Douglas Messerli

 

Bon An and Jhi-Han Yu (screenplay), Jhi-Han Yu (director) Gentleman Spa / 2019 [18 minutes]

 

An overweight cleaner, Hao (Lai Hao-zhe), works in a Taiwanese establishment which provides married and single men the pleasure of a wonderful massage and sexual relief simultaneously. The clearer Hao, cleaning up after one of the sessions discover the clients cell-phone under the message table, calls him and meets up with him to return it. The gentle client, Kai (Christopher Lung), a swimming instructor, is kind to the needy and quite desirous of sexual contact.

     Kai offers to teach him how to swim, and the young man immediately agrees to the lessons, basically falling in love with Kai, even though he realizes he is probably a married man with a child.

      He now, more than ever, desires to work as a masseur, even though he is embarrassed of his body and probably is a virgin, and begs one of the spa’s masseurs, Kevin (Wang Ko Yuan) to teach him some the basics.

      But when Kai returns to the spa, it is Kevin who services him, realizing that his massage has pained the boy, explaining that it was not his choice, simply that he was assigned to him.

      Hao, entering the room to clean up, finds Kai still in the room. Desperate just to touch him, he offers to give him a massage, but Kai argues he has just had one. Yet Hao persists, but unable to given him at all the sensitive massage necessary, and stops him almost as soon as he begins. Suddenly, simply unable to contain himself, he gives Kai a kiss, but the shock is not necessarily a pleasant one for Kai, and Hao is forced to leave in apologies of his behavior.

      In the last scenes, however, we see Kevin, allowing Hao to give him a massage as he explains the techniques, even allowing him to touch his “rock hard” cock, while attempting to make him comprehend that he too must love the sexual titillation, the touch of another body against his own, something Hao can only answer that he hopes someday to realize.

      It remains a sad story, however, because both we and he knows, with his body type, he will never be hired as a masseur, but only left to clean up after, dreaming of the sexual enjoyment men receive in the spa in which he works.

 

Los Angeles, October 16, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2026).