THE STORY – Max (Ruaridh Mollica) is a 25-year-old aspiring novelist, living in London and paying his dues working at a literary magazine. Frustrated by his own ambitions and the pressures to succeed, Max begins moonlighting as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, secretly meeting men via an escorting platform and using his experiences to fuel his stories. What begins as a few furtive meetings soon becomes a hidden nocturnal life, and the debut novel that he has been longing to write finally seems within reach.
THE CAST – Ruaridh Mollica, Hiftu Quasem, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Jonathan Hyde, Leanne Best & Lara Rossi
THE TEAM – Mikko Mäkelä (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 110 Minutes
Writer-director Mikko Mäkelä uses the surprising combination of the realms of publishing and sex work to explore the pressures of modern gay life in his latest film, “Sebastian.” Refreshingly, this isn’t necessarily a story of a young man seeking liberation through exploration – his world of open-minded artistic types hardly needs convincing to sympathize with or even support those in the sex industry. Instead, the film narrows in on the titular character (although “Sebastian” is merely the pseudonym that the main character, Max, uses when meeting with paying customers) as he uses his initially exploratory forays into the world of sex-for-pay to come to terms with himself as a creative voice. Still, the film can’t help but lean into expected tropes, and its unceasingly morose tone leads to some unfortunate thematic implications.
Our main character, Max (Ruaridh Mollica), is a young man already making waves in the literary sphere of London. At the suggestion of his editor, he alters his debut novel to be told from the first-person perspective of a sex worker. So, in order to get a better understanding of this line of work, he decides to pursue paid sexual encounters with men – often older – via an escort website. While he manages to make some meaningful connections through his encounters, his focus on his job and work begins to suffer as a result of the late nights.
Without a doubt, the film’s greatest strength is Jonathan Hyde’s performance as Nicholas, one of the older gentlemen with whom Max forms a bond. Unlike his other trysts, Max is able to be totally himself around Nicholas, thanks to their shared love of fine arts. Nicholas is an unexpected grounding presence for Max, who otherwise finds himself drifting from his true self because of his dual life. Within the film, Nicholas shares his life experiences as a gay elder with Max, who is genuinely interested in his tales. And while it’s undoubtedly soul-affirming to watch an intergenerational queer friendship form, the nature of their relationship butts up against aspects of the film’s forward-thinking angle. Max, his associates, and seemingly the film itself frequently defend the validity of sex work and those who participate in it. However, Nicholas is the rare positive, gentle interaction that Max has on the clock; their first meeting even sees Nicholas rejecting Max’s sexual advances in favor of longer introductory intellectualizing. In doing so, the film (possibly inadvertently) makes inferences about non-troubling moments in this trade being few and far between, especially when compared to the other sexual encounters in the film, which are mostly portrayed as illicit or aggressive. Even removing this confusing moral impartment from the equation, this clashing of themes leads to the film feeling imbalanced in its perspective. Similarly, the narrative can’t seem to help but dip into supposedly outdated plot points, especially in the film’s latter half.
As Max, Mollica displays a naturally tender marker that appropriately plays into viewers’ sympathies. Unfortunately, he’s constrained in terms of what he’s able to show in terms of emotional range, thanks to the screenplay’s consistent need to keep him in a downtrodden, vaguely sad state. Mollica also admirably dives with total commitment into the film’s many, many explicit sex scenes, with a truthfulness that’s necessary to sell the full reality of Max’s new life as Sebastian. Mäkelä’s camera aids him in this task. It floats through Max’s story with an unobtrusive, non-exploitive quality that does more work than the screenplay to stress the vision of the film as neither a cautionary tale nor a fairy tale.
Still, “Sebastian” can’t shake a sense of morose queerness that’s more tiring than impactful. Even the briefest moment of joy – namely, a scene set at a cheeky drag show – merely serves to juxtapose with the serious conversation happening between our characters in the foreground. Queer films shouldn’t exclusively portray the more outwardly positive aspects of the community, but “Sebastian” submerges itself in a gloom which, when combined with its somber portrayal of sex work, makes the film feel more like a lesson than a powerful examination of contemporary gay life.
