Review: Sebastian – “controversial and compelling”

How far would you be willing to go in the creative process for your work to be truly honest and authentic? What kind of boundaries would you feel comfortable pushing? Aristotle defined art as an imitation of life, not necessarily as a carbon copy but more like a representation of the human experience. Oscar Wilde however, introduced the idea that life often imitates art far more than the other way around.

These themes are explored in controversial and compelling fashion by Finnish writer/director Mikko Mäkelä in his sophomore feature, Sebastian. And it barely takes a few minutes into the opening sequence to realise that we’re about to be taken on an unapologetically bold and sexy ride of queer filmmaking where cinema verité meets the meta narratives of French auteurs like François Ozon and Olivier Assayas, both quoted as direct cinematic influences by the filmmaker.

The film’s incipit finds Max (Ruaridh Mollica), our protagonist, seemingly on a date with a middle-aged man, introducing himself as Sebastian and answering questions about personal basics. A jump cut transports them to the bedroom, deeply engaged in rough sexual intercourse. Then, Max leaves the man’s house, pauses in the front yard to catch up with a rush of adrenaline and counts the wad of cash he’s just earned.

Back to his flat share, the twenty-something is working on his laptop through the evening. Quick flashbacks play out his reminiscence of the afternoon encounter and whilst the camera lingers on the computer screen, we become aware that he’s turning his life experience into a piece of auto-fiction. This is the film’s provocative premise, and the audience being thrown in medias res rather than witnessing any mechanism behind it is the most effective stylistic choice.

Max is a London transplant from Edinburgh who’s doing a master’s in creative writing whilst working freelance for a literary magazine. He’s already had a short story published in the prestigious Granta magazine and now he’s working on his debut novel about the life of a sex worker in the digital age with a publisher interested in a quick turnaround of the project. What neither the publisher nor his fellow writers know is that the pages he’s workshopping in class are based on his night job as an escort off the profile he created under the Sebastian pseudonym on a website called “Dreamy Guys”.

The duality of Max’s life soon becomes a proper dilemma since juggling all these commitments and staying focused on different projects simultaneously is no easy feat. Mäkelä delves into the ruthless competitive side of the creative industries with Max, initially the favourite to interview his idol Bret Easton Ellis, quickly losing the assignment to a colleague who “simply” keeps showing up whilst he gets progressively distracted by his “life-imitating-art” side project.

But is he just driven by the ambition of getting a debut novel published so young or is he starting to enjoy the sex worker lifestyle? And if that’s the case, should he feel ashamed or should he boldly feel liberated and embrace being someone who likes casual sex with much older men who are willing to pay for it? The answers are not easy or straightforward, but they arrive by the film’s epilogue. The path to it is inevitably filled with obstacles and the filmmaker doesn’t shy away from acknowledging certain risks and dangers involved in such a life, whilst always observing the reality of facts with a non-judgemental lens. It’s refreshing that Max’s decision to get involved with sex work is not rooted in personal trauma or related conflict. The director has in fact mentioned how when he’d moved to London to attend university, he witnessed firsthand many peers in the creative industries turning to sex work to make ends meet without feeling the pressure of societal stigma. And this was even before Only Fans erupted on the scene.

Up-and-coming Ruaridh Mollica is a brilliant revelation in the titular role as he portrays the ambivalence of this complex character with disarming vulnerability and restraint. This is a brave performance and not just about baring it all on screen for art’s sake. Mollica perfectly captures the nuances of Max’s duality and commands each scene with his hypnotic presence, as he practically appears in almost every frame of the film. Sebastian, after all, is a character study and bravery is undoubtedly one of its thematic threads. The meta layers are there to peel off, and I feel like the legendary Oscar Wilde was onto something…

Sebastian is released in UK and Irish cinemas 4th April.