Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian, starring Ruaridh Mollica, is released in UK & Irish cinemas on April 4. Book Tickets.
For twenty-five-year-old Max (Ruaridh Mollica), an aspiring Scottish writer living and working in London, lived experience is essential to constructing his first novel, which he hopes will enable him to escape the world of freelance magazine work. His book is about a young gay escort called Sebastian, but Sebastian isn’t a literary creation; he is Max’s alter ego. It could be argued that sex worker Sebastian is the Jekyll, to the studious and quiet Max’s Hyde, but this is no supernatural story of split personalities; Sebastian and Max are one: two sides of the same coin striving for sexual liberation, understanding and artistic freedom in a city where loneliness, excitement, fear, and opportunity sit around every corner.
Sebastian is bold, erotic and sensual, his toned, chiselled body tingling with the excitement and fascination of each paying customer, but can Max let his alter ego in and reject the sense of shame that haunts him during the day? One man holds the key to helping Max and Sebastian become one: Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), a sensitive, artistic, knowledgeable editor and ex-lecturer who sees Sebastian in Max and Max in Sebastian.
Mikko Mäkelä’s stunning film offers a thoughtful exploration of Oscar Wilde’s famous quote, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life”, as he places sex, intimacy, artistic drive, marginalised voices and intergenerational gay experience under the microscope. But it is Mäkelä’s bold conversations on 21st-century sex work that make Sebastian a game-changer.
LGBTQ+ storytelling has often viewed male sex work as an outcome and cause of trauma and abuse. Films have frequently focused on the need to escape sex work rather than the desire to embrace it. While Camille Vidal-Naquet’s Sauvage demonstrated the critical role of the sex worker for many older, isolated men, and Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho explored the emotional complexity of a profession hidden in the shadows, both also focused on the need to escape. While Mikko Mäkelä doesn’t shy away from reflecting on the risks Max takes, Sebastian is, at its heart, a portrait of artistic growth, the need for an authentic voice and a choice to immerse oneself in an ancient profession.
I recently sat down with Mikko Mäkelä to discuss intimacy, art, and sex work in the digital age.
Q: For people heading to the cinema this Friday to see Sebastian, can you give us a brief synopsis of the film and its themes?
Sebastian is about a young queer writer living in London who begins a double life as a sex worker to research his first novel and finds himself more at home in the world of sex work than he might have imagined. The film asks us to consider who gets to tell whose stories, whether we have to have lived experience to write about something, and whether those who opt to draw on their experiences make different, interesting, or exciting choices when mining new material.
Q: Building on those themes of creative choices and the lived experience that surrounds the journey of Max and his alter-ego, Sebastian, Oscar Wilde once said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Many would disagree. What is your view?
That question goes to the very core of the film in many ways. What I found fascinating when thinking about the creative process Max goes through in the movie was the space between a writer’s life and their work. Everything can become interrelated for someone seeking material and the experiences that feed it. I was really interested in that moment when a person or an artist might no longer really know whether they are doing something for themselves or their work. Is it art imitating life or life imitating art? I don’t have an answer to that, but I do have a sense that there are lots of artists for whom the relationship between art and life becomes impossible to distinguish.
Q: How do you think the digital world of hookup apps has changed sex work? Do you think it’s enabled more people to enter that world?
Yeah, absolutely. I think the digital world has lowered the threshold for people experimenting with sex work. I’ve observed friends who have entered that world, and there’s no comparison to what sex work was for young gay men and women twenty or thirty years ago. App-based and digitally facilitated connections have enabled those engaged in sex work to be more independent, you know, entrepreneurs who work on their own terms, which definitely mitigates risk. That’s not to say there aren’t still risks, of course, and we explore that in the film, but generally, I think the online world has been a positive development for many.
Q: Ruaridh Mollica’s performance in Sebastian is stunning and highly intimate. How much time did you spend with Ruaridh before filming, shaping the character and the inner relationship between Max and Sebastian?
Quite a bit of time. We were lucky. As you know, independent film financing can be pretty tricky, and the shoot was postponed a couple of times after Ruaridh had been cast. That allowed us more time to study the script together and discuss Max’s motivations and feelings. It was very much a question of understanding the differences between Max and Sebastian, even though they are ultimately the same person. It’s not like Clark Kent and Superman; it’s two versions of the same person existing in the same space.
Q: Were there any films that you drew inspiration from in exploring Max’s experience of sex work?
I did look at quite a few films during the creative process, but as you know, a lot of them depict sex work in a negative or outdated way. One film that I found fascinating and that bears similarities to Sebastian was François Ozon’s Jeune & Jolie, in which we also see a character choose sex work. Sex work isn’t necessary for them in any way; you know, they don’t have an economic imperative; instead, it’s a route to self-discovery. It becomes a way of acting out these different versions of themself.
Q: Conversations on shame also surround Max and his creation of Sebastian. For many older men, gay shame haunted their teenage years and continued far into their adulthood. Do you think feelings of gay shame continue to be an issue for young gay men and women today, despite the progress made in equality?
Yeah, I think so. I certainly grew up with a lot of gay shame. While it has been wonderful to observe younger generations experience less of it, I guess that depends so much on their circumstances, their culture, and the level of conservatism in their family. In Sebastian, I wanted to explore Max’s feelings in a post coming-out space. I didn’t want it to be questioned whether he was out. I wanted to explore themes of shame through his sex work; he’s not coming out as gay, but he is going through a similar struggle in how he comes out as a sex worker. He’s someone who is sex-positive and wants to feel free of shame, but still comes up against intermittent feelings of internalised shame from his upbringing. Society isn’t free of shame around sex, and Max is caught in that space.
Q: There are also fascinating discussions around age, sex, and the feeling of security and safety that Max finds with an older client. How important was it for you to reflect on intergenerational experiences?
Yeah, it’s interesting; those themes grew during the writing process. I had a sort of epiphany thinking about the value of intergenerational relationships and the importance of cultural transmission between generations. I wanted Max to feel surprised and to have his own preconceptions challenged by his relationship with Nicholas, an older man who reveals the connection between Max and Sebastian and challenges him to confront the different sides of himself. There is something very comforting about Nicholas and his presence as he allows Max to open up and be himself.
Q: This is your sophomore feature. How did the creative process of bringing Sebastian to the screen differ from your first feature, A Moment in the Reeds?
It was a very different process. The pace of it and the time from read-throughs to shoot were different. A Moment in the Reeds was, like, six months from the idea to the shoot; with Sebastian, it was more like six years! There was improvisation in A Moment in the Reeds, but Sebastian was highly scripted, and the production scale was so much bigger. But it was also essential for me to try and maintain that sense of intimacy as much as possible. I’m not just talking about the sex scenes where we had a closed set, but the dialogue as well; intimacy, like in A Moment in the Reeds, was key.
Q: What’s next for you?
I’m working on a few things at the moment. I am currently adapting a novel by Finnish-Kosovan author Pajtim Statovci about a forbidden love affair between an Albanian young man and a Serbian young man during the Kosovan war. It’s early in the writing process, but I look forward to adapting it for television.
Mikko Mäkelä’s Sebastian, starring Ruaridh Mollica, is released in UK & Irish cinemas on April 4.
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