An Author’s Secret Sex Work Makes for Dull Drama in Sebastian
Ah, the plight of the young gay white autofiction writer. What’s a 25-year-old Londoner with an agent, publisher and magazine job to do when feeling inadequate about his prose and his accomplishments? In Sebastian, he might supplement his straight-laced life with sex work—not just for the thrill, but for spicing up stories that may be what he fears most: mediocre. The drama finds a potential match with the conflict between the image-forward, public-facing needs of a modern creative and our desires for privacy, but it swipes left in favor of banal familiarity.
Often, Sebastian plays like a rejected article from The Cut, where a tired-eyed twink rejects all self-awareness in pursuit of literary glory. When up-and-coming author Max (Ruaridh Mollica) moonlights as “Sebastian” on the escort site DreamyGuys, his movie follows the standard sex work plot trajectory. At first Max is freaked out, then finds pleasure and fulfillment in the taboo. Then it’s scary again as he gets caught up in his own exciting secret life, falling down a slippery slope and giving into the various pressures he encounters at his night job. Along the way are all the scenes you’ve come to expect from these narratives: clarifying that a relationship is more than sex, actually; running into clients in “the real world;” reckoning with what you’ve become, either by staring in the mirror, sitting sadly in a tub, or crying while jerking off. It’s frustratingly simplistic. Tragedy shorthand.
Finnish-British writer/director Mikko Mäkelä, in his sophomore feature, at least directs the sex well. His intimate, graphic scenes are knowing and detailed, choreographed with that bare minimum insight that so much media lacks, where everything actually seems anatomically possible. On top of injecting a little biological reality, Mäkelä and cinematographer Iikka Salminen make the moody makeouts and transactional fucking the most interesting part of a cold and washed-out movie; Sebastian’s clients (expectedly) skew older, and their bodies are granted a visual equality with the more lithe prostitute. The camera’s close-up appreciations for bodies old and young, round and rail-like, sagged and tight, are more convincing than the similar points made in the script.
The story alternates between dull publishing-world fakeness (a lot of editor-type folks talking about the bravery and honesty of “digital hustlers”) and the true adventures of the writer-subject. Max finds gay community outside of the club or lit scene through his sex work. Daniel (Ingvar Sigurdsson) is a rich businessman with a family at home. Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde) is a chatty old academic with love to give. Both desire Sebastian, but their feelings towards Max differ. Sigurdsson, a standout from last year’s spectacular Godland, is a scene-stealer, full of wry life and warmth. Hyde offers a sadder version, equally winning. Both roles veer into stereotype, only defied by their performers’ abilities.