Sebastian (2024 | UK | 110 minutes | Mikko Mäkelä)
An important Sundance tradition is seeing surprisingly explicit gay sex scenes in public library. Last year it was Passages; this time it’s Sebastian, about an up-and-coming writer discovering himself through the world’s oldest profession: auto-fiction.
In this case, it’s an entrancing Ruaridh Mollica as Max. He has a decent freelance gig at what appears to be among the few glossy magazines still hiring freelancers to compete with staff writers for high profile interviews of Bret Easton Ellis, of all people, in the 2020s. A gay Gen Z writer obsessed with a Gen X novelist who found fame in his early twenties writing fiction inspired by his life is, if not entirely believable, a funny callback, complete with quite a lot of copious interview footage with the self-possessed author.
Max has miraculously strung together enough work to pay the bills on his shared flat, on trend clothes, and his gym membership while also having time to write enough acclaimed short fiction to be in a Granta collection and in profiles of the hottest young literary talents in the UK. But, perhaps due to his real life not being titillating enough to sustain an entire novel, he’s been pursuing sex work as “research” to give his writing a sharper edge and more salacious details. Arranged through an escort website of faceless profiles and chiseled torsos, he gets some spare cash and salacious character studies through well-paid encounters, mostly with older men with less toned bodies and more disposable incomes.
Some of these encounters are a little sad, but they’re all pretty sexy. Some of the guys just want a hot guy for weekends away from their families, others want to fill a romantic gulf left by lost partners, and there are others who just want an extra for their drug-fueled orgies. Cinematographer Iikka Salminen makes Max’s (or rather, “Sebastian”, his working guy alter-ego) look sleek, exciting, and just a little dangerous. The (many) sex scenes bring an adults-only disclaimer to the film, but even in their explicit renditions, they take a generally accepting view of different kinds of bodies and different kinds of sexual expression.
To a degree, Mäkelä’s script wants to be one of sex positivity, but Max guards his outings as “Sebastian” like a dark secret. There’s some hint that this comes from a repressive childhood, but he’s surrounded by young liberals, yet asserts that all of his writings is inspired by interviews rather than personal experiences (which feels very incongruous given the au courant for confessional media). Perhaps more because of Max’s split psyche, his furtive nighttime outings are infused with an incongruous sense of shame and a looming sense of danger.
As his commitment to Sebastian’s work crowds out his “real life” friends and compromises his paying jobs, we feel the line blurring and question the existence of this bifurcation itself become challenged. A repeat client, played by a warm and gentle Jonathan Hyde, further blurs the distinction between real life and research. I don’t know that the film achieves the depth it needs to adequately address the milieu of issues it raises, but it’s a fascinating topic that leads Max into a bit of trouble, but also forces him (and us) to reconsider assumptions while also coming to appreciate unconventional avenues to true intimacy and acceptance. Doing any of that in a compelling and sexy package is its own kind of achievement!
Sebastian played as an official selection of the World Dramatic Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. It will be available for online screenings beginning January 25th.