Sebastian ★★★★

Released: 2nd August (US)/TBC (UK)

Director: Mikko Makela

Starring: Ruaridh Mollica

Review By: Connor Lightbody

Max Williamson (Ruaridh Mollica), the 25-year-old protagonist of Mikko Mäkelä’s sophomore feature Sebastian, is someone who is not just aware of sex work as a concept, but is acutely aware of its optics and location in contemporary politics. Max is an aspiring Scottish writer with a plume of short stories, a freelance gig at a monthly magazine and has a penchant for naive idealism. This idealism finds itself rooted in his novel, of which he has garnered a book deal: a novel about a gay sex worker named Sebastian. It is envisioned as an honest telling of contemporary sex work, pegged to the idea that university students are making a living on virtual sex work site OnlyFans.

During weekly meetings, the novel ‘Sebastian’ is described as insightful, a true portrayal of sex work. For Max, this is vital. Sex work is something he wants to portray correctly and with nuance. To the knowledge of his publisher and colleagues, this insight comes from interviews he conducts with sex workers. This is not the case: Max has instead been moonlighting as a gay sex worker named Sebastian, mining the profession for nuggets of insight. What makes Max so intriguing as a character is that he, as ‘sex work positive’ as he claims to be, is actually ashamed of it. The profile picture he submitted to Adult Work-lite website ‘Dreamy Guys’ is of his chest, face obscured by negative space. He keeps what he is doing a mystery, even when losing his job, in turn causing the sex work he enacts to become survival sex work within the monolithic chaos of London. 

Max begins the journey of Sebastian empowered by what he is doing as a sex worker. It is a thrill to the young Scot. He is so innocent and inexperienced, he doesn’t even possess a spare phone for his solicitations. He is drawn to it over and over again for a variety of reasons: one such reason creates conflict, as his publisher Dionne (Leanne Best) tells him to raise the stakes of the novel, unknowingly sending Max-as-Sebastian down a more sinister path. “Is it just about the money for you?” the protagonist is asked by erudite client Nicholas (a fantastic Jonathan Hyde), of whom Max feels connected to on an intellectual level due to their collected interest in art and literature. But Max’s response to this? Vague. He can’t tell Nicholas why he’s doing it, because then the masquerade drops and the novel then becomes a re-telling, rather than in fiction. Max wants authenticity without being co-signed to the stigma of sex work.

At this point, it is no longer Max or Sebastian. Because while Max continues ‘turning tricks’ on the side of his writing, he finds that the lines blur where his motivations are concerned. Where Sebastian was once just a moniker to protect Max’s identity from punters who stray too close to the real lives of sex workers, his identity begins shifting. The identity of Sebastian marinates underneath Max until it eeks out, Sebastian becoming a mere flip of a same-sided coin. Mollica here, as the Max/Sebastian character, is sensational. The performance is quite naive and puppy-dog – Max is referred to as Bambi, at one point – but it is brimming with a real sense of zeal. Mollica is able to capture the muddled dichotomy of Max/Sebastian in really interesting ways, while his Scottish patois helps feed into the idea of displaced identity. 

Whilst Sebastian is often a throng of rich ideas, there is a streak of meta-commentary that feels highly unrefined here, squandering all subtlety. The film, whose first act is a repetitive engagement of Max-as-Sebastian encountering clients, uses the notes given on the novel to criticise the script’s own shortcomings. Even the prolonged side-track of the film – Nicholas and Max/Sebastian’s relationship, which one would argue is by far the most prominently enticing narrative – is derided by the book’s editor for being too distant from the original proposal. It’s strange to witness a film, in real-time, attempt to preemptively decide on what flaws it proposes exist. The notes from his writer friend Amna (Hiftu Quasem) and publisher also serve to telegraph the entire thematic plot of the novel, and laterally, Sebastian itself. It is a trait of the film that finds itself winking at the audience rather than complimenting a narrative that would have these textual layers without this. This meta-commentary is also found within Max’s journalistic career, where his desire to interview author Bret Easton-Ellis is curbed by his novelistic, naive ambitions to capture authenticity. Easton-Ellis is predominantly known for being the author of American Psycho, but that his novels satirise the transgressive. This is where this meta narrative surrounding Mäkelä’s film finds itself becoming a weak pastiche of Easton-Ellis’ work.

While Max begins the film thinking that he knew about sex work, he finds that his kindling connection to Nicholas, a client, can become a space for him to parse inter-generational queer knowledge that he would not have engaged with. So when Dionne is instructing him to omit the entire Nicholas segment, she is doing so to maintain what she thinks is the authenticity that her audience will accept. Mäkelä’s playfulness here works well to parallel the theme of identity that is pervasive throughout. That Sebastian, the novel, worked for Dionne when it was what she expects and validates her own sense of sex work is perhaps Mäkelä’s entire spiel here: that our ideas around sex work cannot function without viewpoints of the lived experience. This especially highlights how queer voices are marginalised in favour of more superficial portrayals, that will be then fed to a heteronormative audience. Max learns that sex work is much more than transactional and is only able to shift his pre-conceived notions by experiencing both sides of the job; of its danger and in the truthful connection one makes with clients. 

Sex work on screen is rarely regarded with much nuance or dedication to avoiding cliche pitfalls. Queer sex work, even less so. Mollica is able to bring nuance to the character of Max/Sebastian with resounding delicacy, when not pitching the film to audiences as it plods along its more illustrious thematic resonances. While Sebastian appears to have no confidence in its own script, rarely is queer sex work shown like this and never as internally complicated.