Sebastian

 

Writer/director Mikko Mäkelä

director on the set with Ruaridh Mollica and Hiftu Quasem

SEBASTIAN              B                                                                                                                Great Britain  Finland  Belgium  (110 mi)  2024  d: Mikko Mäkelä

Born in a small town in Finland close to the Russian border, whose homophobic parents sent him to gay conversion therapy, Mäkelä moved to England at the age of 18 to study English and French literature, also studying drama before he began his filmmaking career as an editor.  But what grabbed his attention in college was the realization that many of his gay peers, students and grads in creative fields, were involved in sex work, facilitated by apps, marketing themselves online without shame.  Listed as one of the 25 LGBTQ filmmakers on the rise by indieWIRE in 2019, following the success of his earlier film A MOMENT IN THE REEDS (2017), an intimate drama about the chance encounter of two men by the Finnish lakeside.  Mäkelä is most interested in exploring questions of identity, creating stories about marginalized characters at odds with society, particularly within the context of queer cinema, where this film blurs the boundaries between fiction and autobiography.  In that same vein, Max (Italian-Scottish actor Ruaridh Mollica, who brings a certain intensity to the role) is an aspiring 25-year old writer in London who has received plenty of early acclaim, having been published in Granta, now writing for a trendy literary magazine named Wall, mostly short stories and reviews, but he has aspirations for a novel that he is working on, discovering something every writer contends with, wondering how to separate the boundaries between truth and fiction.  Premiering at the 2024 Sundance Festival, the director articulated his desire to make a “frank and honest portrayal of queer sexuality.”  To that end he has succeeded, as apparently gay sex seems to be the only graphic sex that movies still allow anymore, as they’ve been seriously streamlined out of most motion pictures, especially after Covid.  Mäkelä does not shy away from unflinching sex scenes which serve to enhance the film’s realism, where it is actually surprising to see such a healthy exhibition of simulated sex, which adds an element of transparency when it comes to relationships, as there’s some things you just can’t hide.  Max is excited about the idea of being assigned to interview American queer icon Bret Easton Ellis, who published his first novel at 21, and is the author behind Mary Harron’s subversive, off-the-wall, consumerist horror satire American Psycho (2000), generating plenty of publicity about the autobiographical content in his books.  A more senior writer on staff at the magazine, James (Michael Jean-Marain), expresses disappointment he was not getting the assignment, challenging whether it is more about the quality of the writing or the one who actually writes it, but the editor, Claudia (Lara Rossi), wanted someone with personal first-hand experience into the gay perspective, believing Max would bring some fresh insight into it.   

The film is essentially about writing a “pseudo-memoir” about the life of a gay sex worker, which leads Max, under the alter-ego pseudonym Sebastian, to compile experiences secretly meeting with mostly older clients through an online gay escort service, blending his personal encounters with his literary ambitions, where the boundaries are distinctly clear at first, but are increasingly blurred.  What starts out as a few spontaneous sexual encounters leads to a hidden subterranean world, where sex is the key to unlocking the pressures of modern gay life, discovering a deeper sense of self, running through a gamut of emotions from ecstasy, shame, and exhilarating liberation, with Max coming from perhaps the first generation of young gay men who can live openly, freely, and without shame.  Encouraged by a friend and female coworker at the literary magazine, Amna (Hiftu Quasem), Max believes he’s onto something, especially after his manuscript attracts the interest of a literary agent, editor, and publisher, Dionne (Leanne Best), though he admits it’s kind of a “stock character of queer literature,” so she encourages him to change his novel from a third-person to a first-person perspective, a “pseudo-memoir,” believing that would enhance his work.  Sex work has been around for a while, where one need look no further than Luis Buñuel’s artfully surrealist BELLE DE JOUR (1967), before that Mizoguchi’s STREET OF SHAME (1956), or more recently Sean Baker’s Anora (2024), while Gus van Sant explored a gay twist in My Own Private Idaho (1991), as did Gregg Araki in MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004), where a list of films has been compiled on Letterboxd, Male Sex Workers , a list of films by Annie Rose Malamet.  This is a quieter, more introspective film, where the provocative opening scene (“So, tell me about yourself”) places viewers directly into the heated passion of naked gay sex, which can be startling for some, but Max comes across as an earnest, down-to-earth guy, keeping most of his private life to himself, while always appearing natural and authentic, where there’s not a hint of ego or arrogance about him, never placing himself above others, and while he’s open-minded about what he does, with the highs and lows that come with the territory, there’s also an element of secrecy, where his biggest fear is being exposed for leading a double life.  After his encounters, he quickly jots down the details before he forgets, often repeating verbatim the words that were actually said, yet each experience is unique, as each different partner has their own distinct personality.  Sex workers often tread into dangerous territory, or get themselves into precarious positions that can lead to violence, depending on the stability or state of mind of their clients, taking a particular dark turn with powerful businessman Daniel (Ingvar Sigurðsson), so there’s underlying tension and even dread with each encounter.  Nonetheless, Max gets drawn into this nocturnal world, propelling him into increasingly risky encounters, where drugs and alcohol abound, sending him into an erratic tailspin, which causes him to miss scheduled meetings or deadlines, considerably damaging his reputation at the magazine.  

A different female version of this has been seen before in gay filmmaker François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful (Jeune & Jolie) (2013), one of the notable influences on Mäkelä, where sex work is not something done out of monetary need but a journey of self-discovery, as a young woman’s sexual innocence turns darker and drearier.  Similarly, this develops a more somber mood, yet it’s exquisitely shot by Finnish cinematographer Iikka Salminen, featuring a lot of lengthy close-ups and a luminous brightness, turning this into a probing, psychological character study, with Max developing a purposefully impenetrable façade, much of it hiding the shame that he feels swelling inside, or as the director puts it, “the shame of being ashamed.” Tensions escalate with his mother back in Scotland, who disapproves of his lifestyle choices, but he attributes this to blatant homophobia, and tends to think she’s simply out of touch with the modern world, where so many of the everyday transactional relationships are done online, both private and professional, largely for the sake of convenience, where sex work has become increasingly normalized in London’s gig economy, rather than the sad and tragic last resort of how it was viewed in the past.  Much of what we learn about Max is seen through his encounters with others, initially seeming confident with himself, where his future is bright, but anxieties creep in with a developing paranoia, believing what’s private will eventually be exposed, so after he runs into one of his clients at a literary event, he panics, completely deleting his online presence, which is a mental breakdown of sorts, suddenly in an emotional freefall with no recognizable support mechanism.  The film takes a sophisticated turn with more screen time from an older, more culturally refined client, Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde, a revelation), a retired literature professor who is more interested in talking and establishing a personal connection with Sebastian, both intellectually and emotionally, than in anything physical.  His own passion for art is completely recognizable in the interior décor of his home, or in a book Max pulls from his bookshelf, Cyril Collard’s Savage Nights (Les Nuits Fauves), written at the height of the AIDS crisis in 1989, an erotic, autobiographical novel of a bisexual man’s voracious appetite for life in the face of potentially life-threatening danger.  With opera playing in the background, which extends into the bedroom, they have sex to the exotic (yet uncredited) refrains of Nadir’s Aria from Bizet’s rarely seen luxuriance from The Pearlfishers, Jussi Björling - Les Pecheurs de Perles Act l - Je crois ... YouTube (3:35), an ode to an intoxicating, dreamlike memory of pure enchantment, which adds an element of poetic transcendence.   

One can only speculate, but it certainly appears gays more easily accept age differences that might be deal breakers in most heterosexual relationships, probably due to the more transient nature of the hookups.  Completely shifting the cold sterility of the sex acts to moments of tenderness and deeper meaning throws his publisher for a loop, thinking that’s not really what sells, and advises him to change the direction he’s taken.  But this allows viewers into the psychological realms of the perpetually conflicted character, suddenly feeling what he feels, utterly abandoning himself to the spontaneity of the moment, Sebastian – Clip: "Have We Met?" YouTube (1:37), exuding his own euphoric freedom and youthful openness, perhaps best expressed by a brief scene in a theater watching Maurice Pialat’s À Nos Amours (To Our Loves) (1983), where Sandrine Bonnaire’s burgeoning sexuality is on full display, an essential way of connecting with the world.  He’s also drawn into the world he is researching and the eventual consequences of a divided existence, exploring the transgressive power of queer sexuality and the transformative impact that can result from embracing his own sexual autonomy, crafting a newly empowered identity through both art and sex work, which is especially significant since gays have historically been denied authority over their own lives.  Evidence the tragic downward-spiral career trajectory of gay icon Sal Mineo, typecast as a stalker and deranged killer in Joseph Cates’ Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965), which demonstrates how marginalized communities have to navigate difficult spaces that refuse to fully embrace or accept them, leaving them few options.  Sex work remains illegal in Sweden, for instance, despite being known for their progressive policies.  The film begins with an exploration of Max as an escort, yet evolves into an introspective narrative about a young writer wrestling with his creative impulses amid complex societal expectations regarding sexuality and reputation.  It hints at the struggles faced by those in the arts to balance personal expression against commercial viability, emphasizing the importance of self-honesty as the core of Max’s journey, while also addressing the stigma surrounding sex work.  Max is very protective of his private persona, not wanting to taint the prospects of a future career in writing, where he tells his publishers that the novel he is creating is based on extensive interviews, hiding the fact that it’s a great deal more than that, with much more at stake, putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of honesty, leading to many aggressively explicit sex scenes, told with a stark truthfulness that’s necessary to sell the full reality of Max’s life as Sebastian, never resorting to an exploitive quality.  Mäkelä complicates the notion of identity and the façades we create, exploring how such masks can distance us from genuine interaction and intimacy, yet Max’s real self also emerges, more tender and considerate, perhaps surprising even himself, evoking a core loneliness, Sebastian(2024) Gay sex scene YouTube (1:54).  While it maintains the tension of a thriller throughout, where things are satisfyingly unpredictable, this film continues to establish Mäkelä as a significant voice in contemporary queer cinema.

Peter Hujar's Day

 

Director Ira Sachs

director on the set

Peter Hujar and Janet Rosenkrantz

Peter Hujar

PETER HUJAR’S DAY           B                                                                                            USA  Germany  Great Britain  Spain  (76 mi)  2025  d: Ira Sachs

His pictures are exotic but not in a shallow, sensational way.  Looking at his photographs of nude men, even of a naked baby boy, is the closest I ever came to experience what it is to inhabit male flesh.  His photographs of animals have that same rare empathy, they are like highly personal portraits.          —Nan Goldin on Peter Hujar

I often have the feeling that in my day, nothing much happens... That I’ve wasted it.                     —Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw)

A memory-play counterpart to Nan Goldin’s blustery female portrait of the underground scene of New York City’s vibrant, gay subculture of the late 1970’s, as depicted in the brilliant Laura Poitras film 2023 Top Ten List #2 All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022), as this quiet conversational interview of gay portrait photographer Peter Hujar and journalist Linda Rosenkrantz covers much of the same territory, but in a vastly different style, creating a tribute to a forgotten artist, choosing intimacy, authenticity, and the power of personality in capturing the spirit of the times.  Based on recently rediscovered transcripts from a lost 1974 taped interview by nonfiction writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall, who played Vicky, very much resembling Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, 1977, with her pretensions to art and intellect in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 2008), in which she asked Hujar (Ben Whishaw, who, lest we forget, played doomed English poet John Keats in Jane Campion’s Bright Star, 2009) to narrate the events of the previous day in minute detail, a project she hoped to expand to other artists, creating a series of these “day in the life” artistic portraits, but it never materialized, yet there’s something subversive and refreshingly experimental about it.  As he recalls the seemingly trivial details of what happened in Rosenkrantz’s Yorkville, Upper East Side apartment, it amounts to a film-long monologue, a rare illustration of how cinema accentuates the written word, fully embracing the power of language in a tightly compressed cinematic space, working in “portraiture,” much like Hujar, creating a representation of a character always questioning his work, mostly taking place in single rooms, moving from a kitchen to a living room to a bedroom, occasionally venturing onto the roof to have a smoke, seen incessantly smoking cigarettes (only 56 cents a pack at the time, complaining that it went up a penny), often engulfed in a cloud of everpresent cigarette smoke, with the sympathetic ear of Rosenkrantz listening intently to every word, projecting a warm, empathetic presence.  Having known each other since their early 20’s (now in their 40’s), a central aspect is having complete trust and faith in one another, coming at a time when photography was not yet recognized as a serious artform, with few gallery sales or exhibits, and artists barely able to eke out a living, but the published success of Diane Arbus quickly changed that.  In Ira Sachs films, artists and their perception play a role, with Hujar realizing that he lies more often than he thinks, creating a narrative that he thinks makes things easier in developing relationships, while also offering a few casual observations about the sexually permissive subculture of the New York art scene, exposing tenderness, pain, frustration, fear, and love, so there are a lot of feelings bubbling beneath the surface.  Stripped of everything except the bare essentials, this short 76-minute excursion into the bohemian art scene reminds us that Sachs is a quintessential New York City filmmaker, capturing a specific moment in New York queer cultural history and a still-influential art scene, filled with name-dropping some of the more iconic artists of the time, yet to him they were friends and contemporaries sharing the same orbit, revealing a completely different, more intimate side of their lives as he photographed them, offering astute takes on the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag, Fran Lebowitz, Robert Wilson, Vince Aletti, Janet Flanner, Glenn O’Brien, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Ed Baynard, and Maurice Hogenboom, who are just a small sample size.  Perhaps most compelling is his visit to the “dismal” Lower East Side home of Allen Ginsberg, which he describes as “the most run-down tenement,” surprised by the dilapidated apartments and burnt-out buildings in the neighborhood, sent on assignment to photograph him by The New York Times, but an uncooperative Ginsberg completely ignored him and instead sat on the floor and chanted, something she describes as “ohm-land,” with Hujar refusing to interrupt, claiming, “I can’t interrupt God.”  Later Ginsberg went on various rants about corrupt corporate powers, insisting upon being photographed on the exact site where he was recently mugged.   

Hujar died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 53, mostly penniless, with his on-and-off again lover and artist David Wojnarowicz (who was 20 years younger) at his bedside in the hospital documenting Hujar's final moments, known only among a certain group of people, yet his individualistic personality shines through.  He left behind a complex and profound body of photographs, where he was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers, documenting the 1970’s and 80’s East Village scene in a pre-gentrification world of cultural, sexual, and artistic revolution before the AIDS crisis in New York during the tumultuous Reagan and Bush eras.  A film that Sachs describes is “about what it is to be an artist among artists in a city where no one was making any money,” all underappreciated at the time, yet Hujar was enormously admired for his completely uncompromising attitude towards his life and work, a consummate technician, exercising meticulous control in the darkroom, where his portraits of people, animals, and landscapes, with their exquisite black-and-white tonalities, were extremely influential, receiving only marginal public recognition during his lifetime, but he has since become recognized as one of the most influential photographers of the latter half of the 20th century.  Highly emotional yet stripped of excess, Hujar’s photographs are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way, but he was never as famous as Nan Goldin or Robert Mapplethorpe.  His extraordinary first book, Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag, was published in 1976, but did not sell well, as his “difficult” personality and refusal to pander to the marketplace insured that it was one of the last published works during his lifetime, as his ambivalence toward success, commerce, and the art world at large often led him to shun the limelight.  An exercise in minimalism, an ode to the banality of everyday life, much of this feels like flipping through the pages of someone else’s diary, where even the smallest details feel significant, as they are attributed to this single personality and no one else, yet Hujar is very much in his element among this extraordinary group of artists, who are never seen, but spoken about in a very matter-of-fact manner, allowing us to briefly hang out with them, reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) as he namedrops his way through art history, while at the same time this is a portrait of an extraordinary artist as an ordinary person, featuring just a camera and the sound of a man’s voice recalling what happened the day before, from the time he woke up until the moment he went to sleep, with no rehearsals prior to the filming, which is rare for an actor with this amount of dialogue.  Sensuously shot in mostly natural light by Alex Ashe (who is himself a photographer) on Super 16mm, creating a grainy, analog texture to match the 1970’s setting, fresh off filming Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s dreamy, yet inspired The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024), this offers a masterclass in composition, capturing the changing light as the day turns into night.  Equally compelling is the exquisite editing by Affonso Gonçalves, who just happened to work on Chloé Zhao’s 2025 Top Ten List #4 Hamnet (2025), while also a frequent collaborator of Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, and Ira Sachs, where in a spontaneous moment the extended microphone attached to a boom is seen as a shadow on the wall.  Never attempting to hide its artifice, what comes as a surprise is the use of Mozart’s Requiem, which is almost shocking in its over-the-top grandeur, yet it adds an operatic grandiosity to small, ordinary moments that become elevated with an extraordinary touch of artistry.  Equally revelatory is a liberating moment of just the two of them dancing around the dining room to the rockabilly sounds of Tennessee Jim - Hold Me Tight YouTube (2:16).

Discovering the 36-page book credited to Rosenkrantz (Linda Rosenkrantz - Peter Hujar's Day) of the missing interview transcripts (Peter Hujar's Day - Read The Screenplay) in a gay Parisian bookstore while shooting 2023 Top Ten List #8 Passages, Hujar was a pioneering queer artist, a man whose presence was so calming that Nan Goldin once called him as “human Valium,” turning away from commercial work early in his career to focus on subjects of his own choosing, including his circle of friends and lovers, landscapes, nudes, and animals, looming large as both a brilliant artist and valuable mentor in the Lower East Side avant garde arts/cultural scene of the 1970’s and 80’s.  Evoking a feeling of time and place, with both Hujar and Sachs using the camera as an instrument of intimacy, capturing a surprising amount of emotional depth without resorting to any form of intellectualism, as there is no plot or conflict in the conventional sense, nor are any changes in the characters’ lives depicted, yet in the mind of the filmmaker, the book was radical in its honesty, providing a cinematic landscape of what constitutes a queer artist, where the idea of just two people talking in a room, with no romantic intentions, has perhaps not been done since Louis Malle’s MY DINNER WITH ANDRE (1981), Jonathan Demme’s one-man autobiographical monologue by Spalding Gray in SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA (1987), or James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour 2015), a fictionalized account of successful American novelist David Foster Wallace recounting his heavily dialogue-driven reflections to a young Rolling Stone reporter.  Having worked with Whishaw before in PASSAGES, both share a deep curiosity about art and beauty, life and queerness, and an interest not limited to movies alone, but including all the various art forms, where the simplicity of the film speaks volumes, as Hujar’s unsparing comments are so authentic, unguarded and raw, filled with moments of self-doubt, spoken so naturally, where his artistic insecurities are on full display, worrying about the high costs of everything, with nothing showy or melodramatic, receiving a barrage of phone calls, spending a lot of time in his darkroom developing pictures, with the names of fellow artists flowing off his lips with ease, where it helps to be well-versed in the New York literary scene of the 1970’s, as otherwise it becomes confusing why these names are given so much screen time.  What these people have created, nobody does anymore, so it feels really distant, a portrait of a lost time, a culture that has disappeared, just like the neighborhoods being discussed which have been razed over from gentrification.  It may be lost on viewers that both actors in front of the camera portraying American artists happen to be British, which you’d never know, rendered beautifully by both, with Hall breaking out some variation of a Bronx accent, but the onscreen presence of Whishaw, in particular, is hypnotic in its subtlety, arguably the actor’s finest hour, as he lures viewers into his highly personalized world and somehow makes even the smallest details matter, as if he actually possesses a photographic memory, like waiting in line the day before, yet recalling the exact price of someone else’s Chinese takeout order.  Literally immersed in a communal art world that has long since passed, this period may be a renaissance heyday of underground New York artists, seen in a totally different light than their public personas, told from a perspective of someone who knew and worked with them all, offering a stream-of-consciousness portrait of a moment in time and the kind of tiny events that make up a day in the life of these iconic figures, some of it amusing, some demeaning, actually sounding more like friendly gossip, yet what crosses Hujar’s mind offers insights into how artists see themselves, as they’re just ordinary people who can produce extraordinary moments that can become timeless.  Sachs was able to collaborate with a 90-year old Rosenkrantz, from sharing photographs to describing in detail her friendship with Hujar, making a film about what amounts to two people talking while sharing their insights, leading to an intimate relationship between the camera and its subject, including a scene that was edited out of the book, KVIFF.TV • Peter Hujar's Day (clip) • Video online YouTube (1:33).