"So, tell me about yourself" are the first words you hear in the film Sebastian, delivered softly but directly by a nervous man trying to avoid monotone.
For anyone who’s ever dated or used hookup apps before, the awkward tension is recognizable enough to send a shiver of embarrassment down your spine.
"What do you want to know?" responds the voice of a much younger man, in a tone that suggests he really wants to know why the other man is interested.
What follows, only two minutes into the film’s nearly two-hour runtime, are the intense sights and sounds of lovemaking that seems so real it will have you checking the movie's rating. Although this sexual encounter between two men is clearly not love, it isn't a quick anonymous hookup either. It's a transaction.
The young man who calls himself Sebastian is a sex worker for the digital age — meeting clients online and making their dreams come true for an hour or two in real life. Sebastian's name is actually Max, and he isn’t really after money. Rather, he's mining his experiences for stories.
"He's kind of desperate to get this debut novel," said Sebastian’s writer and director Mikko Mäkelä, but Max's desperation threatens to unravel his ambitions.
NPR's Ayesha Rascoe spoke with Mäkelä and star Ruaridh Mollica about what the film has to say about authenticity, sex and different generations of queer men.
No big deal
Mikko Mäkelä’s own journey of self-discovery led him to Sebastian. He told NPR that when he first moved to London after finishing university, he was inspired by the matter-of-fact stories his friends told about sex work.
"It really seemed to be becoming almost another option in London's gig economy," Mäkelä said. "The threshold to going into sex work seemed to really have lowered and I really wanted to craft a portrait of a character for whom sex work is a choice rather than something done out of a lack of them."
Mäkelä said that he wasn’t interested in creating yet another sex worker drama focused on trauma — but that he didn't want Max to be void of conflict either. In fact, the character’s dueling lives threaten to overwhelm him throughout the film.
Ruaridh Mollica said he felt the conflict brewing within his role from the very first reading.
"That's why he decides to do it under the alias of Sebastian at the start. And I think once you decide to keep it a secret, it's almost like [it] kind of festers and it becomes harder and harder to admit it," Mollica said. "I don't think Max wanted to feel judged or was in a position with himself where he felt comfortable enough, and like, self-accepting enough to be judged.”
Mäkelä said he wants the audience to question their own biases as Max does in the film.
"I think there is definitely a lot of hypocrisy around that idea where the [publishing] industry might, you know, fetishize those stories, but … a publisher might still judge the writer who is also a sex worker," he said.
Framing every sex worker as a victim, backed into a corner, isn’t always accurate or interesting (something Max eventually finds out in the film). Neither is a film where the sex seems unrealistic, Mäkelä said.
Sex should be real and shameless
Queer viewers — especially those who identify as male — will be struck by how true-to-life the sex scenes are in Sebastian. The movements, sounds and, er, shall we say "mechanics," are so accurate you may question whether there’s any pretending at all.
"The sex scenes were such an integral part of the story that they had to be thought of in just the same way as [the] building blocks of character," director Mäkelä told NPR. "I think it's really important to continue to provide for representation of queer sex where certainly, you know, there is more and more in [the] media, but … it's not always realistic."
Mäkelä identifies as gay himself, and his star Ruaridh Mollica said the 35-year-old writer/director's script was already quite thorough. Still, Mäkelä enlisted the help of intimacy coordinator Rufai Ajala.
"It's also important to work with a queer intimacy coordinator who would, you know, kind of understand the anatomy in [a] detailed way to make sure that those scenes did ring true to two queer audience members," Mäkelä said. "And it was also really important to have a range of sex scenes with different clients and kind of see different body types … and ages."
Sebastian is actor Ruaridh Mollica’s biggest role, and having to be close-to-nude for much of the film made it a challenging one. He said having an intimacy coordinator like Ajala on-set was crucial.
"I think intimacy coordinators are so important nowadays," Mollica told NPR. "They will just set you up with the other actor and you'll do all these experiences and workshops of safe touches and going through each other's bodies with each other in a very respectful way, and building boundaries and just feeling safe and comfortable. After about half an hour, you would feel so relaxed and trusting with your co-actor."
Mollica said that, beyond the intimacy coordinators, he was just lucky to have such talented and gracious scene partners, including character actor Jonathan Hyde.
Ageism among queer men
Mollica vividly recalls working with Hyde, who plays the one client his character meets who actually steals his heart.
"Jonathan Hyde is one of the most wonderful people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He was just such a silly, fun guy," Mollica told NPR. "He gave his whole heart to those scenes and really almost brought this energy into the air of like, 'no, let's, let's live this and be real here.' We all dropped our guard and just got to be a part of it. And I think those scenes are some of the most powerful because of that."
Hyde's character Nicholas is an older literature professor who's recently lost his partner of 29 years. He is almost immediately vulnerable with Mollica's much younger Sebastian, and what starts as a transactional relationship soon develops into something sweet.
"I really wanted through that encounter for Max to be surprised and the audience to be surprised as well," Mäkelä said. "I really wanted to challenge Max in what his preconceptions about sex work had been, and and what his experiences thus far had been."
And the surprise, in part, is that Max (or Sebastian) isn't expecting to fall in love with a man so much older than he is. Because, well, as Mäkelä put it: "I think the gay community can be and generally is quite horribly ageist."
"I think maybe on a subconscious level, even I was wanting to kind of work against those preconceptions. Like Max says as well, outside of these meetings, there might not really be many other venues in which these characters would have anything to do with one another," he said.
In the film, Max is steadfast in including the love story between him and Jonathan Hyde's character in his novel, even if the publishers aren't convinced. Because as he says in the film "they’re transmitting queer history and culture and that's something I want to talk about."
In the end, actor Ruaridh Mollica said he’s learned as much about acting as he has about himself from becoming Sebastian.
"I feel so much more confident in myself after that. And even my body confidence, you know, having to be practically naked on set every day and knowing that's going to be released and it really has just been a complete self-acceptance of my sexuality," said Mollica, who identifies as queer. "You know, it's something that I was open about with people around me, but not something I had talked about so publicly before."
Sebastian is playing in select theaters now.
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