The Spa
2018 · 8m · Australia
Directed by Will Goodfellow
A retiree tries to cancel a hot tub delivery, but the deliveryman suspects there's more to the story.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The setup screams Hallmark restraint—retiree, hot tub, mild misunderstanding—but Goodfellow's actually mining something weirder about loneliness and how strangers read each other's silences; it's a small film doing small subversions, which is exactly the kind of thing everyone else sleeps on.
A quietly composed character study that recalls the restraint of mid-career Reichardt, where the entire emotional architecture hangs on what *isn't* said between two people in a driveway; the pacing and framing choices demonstrate real formal awareness of the comedy-drama balance.
The deliveryman's moment of recognition—that micro-shift where he stops seeing the transaction and starts seeing the person—is the entire film, and Goodfellow nails it with a single held look that transforms eight minutes of modest premise into something genuinely moving.
Reviews
A retired man tries to decline a hot tub delivery in this heart-warming short by writer-director Will Goodfellow of Sydney-based studio Goono.