Sexual Desire and the Public Self: Masculinity, Sexuality, and Female Agency in the Malayalam Film Spa

Abstract The 2026 Malayalam film Spa, directed by Abrid Shine, brings into view a largely hidden aspect of urban life in Kerala. Set in a city spa over the course of a single day, the film follows several visitors whose conversations and encounters reveal their desires, anxieties, vulnerabilities, and carefully maintained public identities. Using a thematic reading of the film, this paper examines four major concerns: masculinity and sexuality, non-normative sexual interests, women’s agency, and the tension between private sexual needs and public respectability. The paper explores how the male characters seek intimacy and sexual fulfilment while attempting to protect their family roles, professional status, and social reputation. It also considers how the film portrays desires that fall outside socially accepted ideas of sexuality, without automatically treating them as abnormal or immoral. The women working in the spa are not represented only as victims or sexual objects; they are also shown as individuals who negotiate power, work, money, personal boundaries, and difficult clients. The paper argues that Spa reflects a central contradiction in contemporary Kerala society: sexuality is actively pursued in private but often denied, judged, or silenced in public.