Writer-director Mikko Mäkelä’s brooding sophomore feature Sebastian, which premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 40th Sundance Film Festival, captivatingly explores the creative process and contemporary conversations around authenticity and authorship.
As the film opens, we meet an inexperienced sex worker, Sebastian, as he makes small talk with an older client before having sex with him. Having counted the cash he has just made, the young man returns to his shared house (carefully avoiding his housemate), and begins to write in detail about the encounter. It turns out that Sebastian is a pseudonym being used by Max (Ruaridh Mollica), an East London-dwelling 25 year-old Scottish journalist and aspiring novelist who is researching his first book, which is centred on the experiences of a gay sex worker.
In an editorial meeting at the online magazine where Max is a longterm freelancer, his intimidating but fair-minded editor Claudia (an excellent Lara Rossi), tasks him with his dream assignment; an interview with American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. Max’s fellow journalist, James (Michael Jean-Marain), is immediately disgruntled, feeling that he has been overlooked, but Claudia asserts that Max has the queer lived experience to do the piece justice. As Max prepares for the interview, we see clips of Ellis addressing assumptions that his work is autobiographically inspired. Later, Max’s supportive best friend and work colleague, Amna (an engaging Hiftu Quasem), who is also a budding author, praises a short story that Max has recently had published, saying that she doesn’t think that he could have written it if he “hadn’t lived it”.
Resentful of being stuck writing short stories and reviews of other people’s work, Max appears to be on the cusp of major success as a writer and is beginning to receive considerable press attention. His disarmingly direct, rather brittle literary editor Dionne (a fantastic Leanne Best), has agreed that his debut novel will be published the following year if the finished work lives up to the promise of the initial chapters that he has shared with her. However, as he gets increasingly drawn into Sebastian’s lifestyle, Max loses focus and risks sabotaging everything that he has been building in his career; acting erratically when the two worlds threaten to collide at a literary function. At the magazine, he fails to meet his deadlines and skips important meetings; in his personal life he neglects his friendship with Amna, and ignores persistent phone calls from his mother in Scotland.
When he does finally visit his family, his mother is clearly proud of his achievements in London, but entirely unconvinced that his short stories—which she has tracked down online—are purely fictional as he claims. She is from a generation that values privacy and cautions him not to share too much of himself with the world. It is advice that seems to be as much out of genuine concern for her son’s wellbeing, as it is to do with any shame that his explicitly sexual queer work might bring on the family, though Max likely only perceives the latter.
As Max compares the other profiles on the “Dreamy Guys” escort site that he is advertising himself on, he watches an explicit clip of penetrative gay sex that one user has uploaded. It serves to show how much some people are prepared to share of themselves online, while Max is determined to remain as anonymous as possible, reluctantly sending a face pic only when absolutely necessary to secure a client. When Oliver (Pedro Minas)—who Max meets at a discreet no-phones group sex party arranged by a lawyer couple—casually suggests that they should “collab” on OnlyFans, he seems to admire the degree of sexual liberation the young man embodies, which he can’t bring himself to embrace in his own life, but is fascinated by.
Including that explicit clip of real sex, however briefly, is a potentially risky move when it comes to the film’s own depiction of sex, in that it could seem artificial by comparison, but that proves far from the case. Each sex scene is brilliantly choreographed, directed, and acted and feels true to the characters and the situation, and there is always more to the dynamics of each scene than the sex itself. It also goes to show, that as well as making the cast feel safe, protected, and comfortable about the work that they are doing, the role of an intimacy coordinator (Rufai “Roo” Ajala in this case) is to make the sex look as real as possible, if that is the intention of the filmmaker. Here, in a film that is about the authenticity of representation, it is vital, especially given that sex is a crucial element of Max’s work. Mäkelä also examines how the experience impacts the way Max has sex when he’s not working. Joel (Dylan Brady), a friend from Max writers’ group who he hooks up with, can feel a lack of intimacy and genuine connection, and asks Max to stop while he is topping him, reminding him that they aren’t making a porn film.
Along with the sex itself, Max discovers that there is a therapeutic aspect to the job with certain clients. Another theme of the film is loneliness, specifically urban loneliness, where one might be surrounded by thousands of people yet still feel a sense of isolation. One client who becomes a regular, Nicholas (beautifully played by veteran actor Jonathan Hyde), is more interested in talking and connecting with Sebastian intellectually and emotionally than in anything physical. While Max, who is just as lonely in his own way, seems to appreciate this intergenerational friendship with a gay man that isn’t founded upon sex and gradually begins to let his guard down. When this begins to appear in Max’s writing, Dionne is unimpressed and wants him to stick to less romantic material that fits in with her preconceptions about sex work, or at least what will sell.
Acknowledging its potential hazards, Mäkelä generally presents the work in a neutral, rather matter-of-fact way, treating it no differently from Max’s journalism and novel writing. Composer Ilari Heinilä’s score doesn’t sensationalize it either. The only judgement about sex work is from Max himself and some of the members of his writing group. Every time Max mentions the research he has been doing for the book, he is quick to qualify that he means interviews he has conducted, and not the kind of research that he has actually been doing. In his writing, he also seems at pains to disguise the true layer of intimacy that he has with his subject matter, and is reluctant when Dionne recommends that a shift to first-person narration would enhance the work.
Crucial to the film’s success, Mollica delivers natural, impeccably delicate work as Max, giving him a compelling intensity, despite the character’s composed, purposefully impenetrable exterior, with his subtlety expressive face hinting at the perfect storm of frustration, ego, desire, and shame that is brewing on the inside. As an observer, taking in every detail so that he can write it down later, it makes sense that Max is slightly distanced from the action around him, and Mollica skillfully calibrates his performance so we catch the moments when Max is being drawn into the world he’s researching.
Mollica’s nuanced performance is captured by cinematographer Iikka Salminenal’s vérité style long close-ups, while the film’s muted colour palette contributes to a restrained, rather sombre tone. Mäkelä maintains the tension of a thriller throughout and keeps things satisfying unpredictable. Sebastian sees him continue to establish himself as significant voice in contemporary queer cinema and I look forward to seeing what he does next.
By James Kleinmann
Sebastian world premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the 40th Sundance Film Festival. Opens in select theaters in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on August 2nd, 2024 from Kino Lorber.