Sebastian review – journalist turned sex-worker aims to turn side-hustle into art

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Ruaridh Mollica is very good as Max, a freelance writer with a secret app life in prostitution, but Mikko Mäkelä’s film is not clear enough about his motivations Sex work as a window into human nature is a longstanding theme in cinema, from Kenji Mizoguchi’s Street of Shame to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, and onwards. It is intensified here by the fact that the protagonist Max (Ruaridh Mollica), who mines his side-hustle escort work for material, is also a writer. But this uneasy, self-regarding sophomore effort by Finnish-British director Mikko Mäkelä, never fully distancing itself from the narcissistic prism of artistic creation, only fleetingly makes contact with flesh-and-blood human truths. By day, Max is a freelance hotshot for London’s trendy Wall magazine; he has just bagged himself a sweet assignment to interview Bret Easton Ellis. By night he is “Sebastian”, a hot commodity on an app called DreamyGuys. Typically servicing the older gentleman, he turns his experiences...
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‘I’ve failed, badly – and I’m good with it’: James McAvoy on class, comfort and carnage

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He says that acting is a gamble – but is a dead cert to terrify audiences with new film Speak No Evil. The Scottish actor talks about marriage, therapy – and why Ken Loach would never cast him

He is a funny character, James McAvoy. I meet him in one of those fancy Soho hotels where the cast of films that are about to be massive assemble so they can all be interviewed on the same day. And McAvoy’s new psychological thriller, Speak No Evil, will be massive. A remake of the 2022 Danish original, it is just as terrifying, with one difference.

McAvoy, 45, is personable and urbane. He is wearing a suit, but looks like a guy who changes into cargo shorts as soon as he gets home. “I’m really lucky in a lot of ways, mainly that my granny’s all over me,” he says. “I’ve definitely got a large dose of what she has.” His parents divorced when he was 11, and his mother was ill, so he went to live with his grandparents in Drumchapel, Glasgow. Later, considering class, he describes his childhood tangentially, talking about why Ken Loach would never cast him. “I’m too much of an actor. And I’m, like: ‘I grew up on the council estate you shot half your films on!’ But I’m too much of an actor.”

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