| Updated:
Sebastian film review and star rating: ★★★
Fact and fiction mesh steamily in this drama that offers a modern perspective on sex and ambition.
Ruaridh Mollica plays Max, a young gay man and aspiring writer looking to make his breakthrough in the literary world. To research for his debut novel, he works as an escort in London, using his encounters as material for his story.
As his writing career begins to launch, the pressures of balancing his two lives cause him to unravel. Heavy eroticism combines with psychological drama in a film that examines what sexuality means today.
Sebastian film: more an intense character study than examination of sex work
Why Max’s clients pay for his companionship is as compelling as the reason he offers it, as he encounters closeted husbands, men grieving their partners, and lawyers insistent on privacy.
Technology adds an extra layer, as the film ponders the anonymity of escort apps. It’s Max’s after dark activities that keep the film going, as the depiction of the literary world can feel a bit one-dimensional.
Tense editorial tussles feel like a fictionalised image of the literary world; it all seems so cold and callous you wonder why it’s such a draw.
Mollica works hard to give the lead dimension, as Max’s motivations seem a bit vague, but he is never better than in his scenes with Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), an older man more interested in cultural conversations than he is bedroom gymnastics.
It’s more interesting as a character study than vehicle for examining the larger questions about sex work. A flawed but interesting drama, Sebastian presents a lot of modern conundrums, but performs better when focusing on humanity.
Read more: Death of a Unicorn film review: don’t deep this A24 comedy-horror
Read more: Adolescence fans are discovering ‘unbearably tense’ Stephen Graham drama Boiling Point
