Queer Novelist Rediscovers Himself Through Double-Life in Sex Work

Write what you know, as the saying goes — so if you don’t know it, do the research. A young Londoner takes on that task and goes through the digital looking glass in Finnish-British writer-director Mikko Mäkelä’s “Sebastian,” now in limited release from Kino Lorber after premiering at Sundance earlier this year. Titled after the pseudonym that aspiring novelist Max (Ruaridh Mollica) employs when propositioning himself for other men, this adamantly morose drama keeps a close eye on its lead as he navigates his intimacy issues. But despite the film’s confident naturalism, it seems less intimate as it goes on, with Max somehow growing more distant and generic as he becomes more comfortable in his own skin.

By day, Max makes his way as a freelance writer, turning in half-hearted features for a culture magazine. He tinkers away at short stories and idolizes Bret Easton Ellis (whose own reputation for queer auto-fiction is an acknowledged influence on “Sebastian”; the author is given special thanks in the credits). Max wants to have a book published, and he’s figured out a subject for our times: internet-facilitated sex work. Max keeps an active profile on Dreamy Guys, a website where men can swipe on each other’s profiles and offer payment for hook-ups. After each night out, Max eagerly retreats home to his laptop, incorporating the private interaction into his prose. The film follows him into his memories, with brief, jittering flashbacks that signal his recall of tactile details and moments of vulnerability.

Mäkelä devotes his attention to his protagonist’s emotional experiences. With that comes a focus on sex scenes. “Sebastian” reins these explicit moments into artfulness, often showing just one or two moments instead of the full arc. Early sequences are focused on the most athletic encounters, with Max reaching a furious tempo as he brings screaming men to climax. Despite his trepidations, Max clearly derives a great deal of sexual pleasure from these moments; what’s more, so do his partners.

“I just wonder if it gets repetitive,” a fellow writer shares in peer-edits of Max’s drafts. It’s a criticism that both he and the film take to heart, as the writer seeks out new material, including a drug-induced orgy and an emotionally supportive relationship with Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), a cultured, opera-loving septuagenarian who has come into his sexuality late in life. When Max’s publisher (Leanne Best) advises him to abandon that warm relationship and take on some grit, Max even tries bottoming for the first time — a conspicuous swap in sexual positions that could seem farcical if the film weren’t so doggedly serious.

Max tells himself all these interactions are primarily writing exercises, wary to acknowledge them as being personally fulfilling. Pointedly, he begins by exclusively fielding propositions from older men, rebuffing a fellow 20-something’s advances at a nightclub. He also avoids a public run-in with Nicholas at a literary event, deleting his chat history with him in a panic.

Featured in every scene of the film, Mollica’s lead performance gives “Sebastian” most of its pull. Given spare dialogue, he manages to convey a man who’s actively cognizant of his surroundings and sexual partners’ inhibitions, yet reticent from looking inward at his own. Max seems to run from himself in ways beyond his sexuality too. He’s sheepish about fostering a presence on social media, despite the professional benefits that doing so offers a rising writer. And he keeps his warm mother (Stella Gonet) at arm’s distance, despite her adoration and support of his writing.

Such insecurities, along with the choice to avoid defining how closeted Max is early on, give “Sebastian” an intriguing emotional scope beyond a directly told coming-out story. But as the story progresses, Mäkelä doesn’t seem compelled to invest agency into Max so much as to wallow in the character’s reclusiveness. Mäkelä seems primed to judge the character in a late conflict, in which a client becomes irate after discovering Max’s fictionalization of their interaction, but the sequence passes without affording the protagonist an opportunity to take any action at all, instead ending with him meekly wandering away.

The abrupt dispute sets up an awkward resolution for a film heavy on naturalism and light on dramatic pivots. “I don’t just want this to be a sad sex worker story,” Max declares about his novel in a later scene, arguing with his publisher. The danger of spinning a hack cautionary tale seems at the top of the film’s mind too. But in that aversion, “Sebastian” ultimately overcorrects, leaving off with a character whose self-actualization, while seemingly hard-earned, lands as imprecise and pat.