James Fanizza | Sebastian / 2017

how to trust the heart

by Douglas Messerli

 

James Fanizza (screenwriter and director) Sebastian / 2017

 

Toronto Film Scene magazine critic William Brownridge described his fellow Canadian James Fanizza’s 2017 film Sebastian as a relatively typical and predictable romantic drama, but I’ve seen very few films wherein within a few moments of the opening credits a young man, in this case Alex (Fanizza playing the lead role), whose boyfriend Nelson (Guifré Bantjes-Rafols) has just left for a week’s vacation, immediately beds down with the boyfriend’s visiting cousin from Argentina, Sebastian (Alex House). Particularly, since Nelson has introduced the two and suggested his lover look after Sebastian to make sure he has an interesting visit, it’s difficult to sympathize with the romantic relationship founded on a cheating heart.

     Alex makes it even more difficult to feel any delight in his new conquest, moreover, by representing his actions as being insignificant since he was about break up with Nelson anyway; at least, Sebastian shows some sense of familial guilt.

     Fortunately, Fanizza’s film gradually reveals its central figure—with whom Sebastian immediately falls in love despite himself—as being far more complex and problematic, taking the film in directions that, in fact, one might have never expected in a romantic drama.

     The central friction between the two sudden lovers, Alex and Sebastien, is that the latter is the “settling-down” kind of gay man, while Alex, as is apparent in his quick abandonment of Nelson, has no sense of commitment, seeming almost happy that the deep sexual satisfaction that Sebastien provides him will last only a week before his cute trick returns home.

      But Sebastien, more than a cute boy with long hair and a Spanish romantic charm, is a kind of honest innocent who asks questions of Alex and insinuates himself into the other’s world so fully that the Toronto boy begins to admit to information he has never shared previously with any friends, including his supposed best friend, drag queen Xenia (RuPaul Drag Race performer Brian McCook, better known as Katya Zamolodchikova)—namely that in high school he had a consenting affair with his married history teacher who was arrested, when Alex’s parents discovered the relationship, and imprisoned for pedophilia.

     Fanizza, both as writer and director, seems to cast this off as simply another piece of information in the increasingly complex portrait of Alex. But, in fact, this might have taken the film on a fully different trajectory, and almost does, when at a visit to his favorite gay bar with Sebastian, Alex runs into the history’s professor’s wife, who when she spots Alex in the crowd, hurries after him and Sebastian just to find out “how he is?”

     Obviously, Sebastian and the film’s audience is perplexed concerning the event, and when we discover, soon after, that in fact the history professor committed suicide in jail soon after Alex’s visit to him and insistence that his love would remain, we can well understand why Alex is afraid to truly fall in love ever again.

    Sebastian, who without permission has leafed through Alex’s sketch book almost as he riffles through Alex’s head, encourages his new friend to further explore his art, allowing his emotions to find a healthy outlet. Inevitably, Sebastian’s increasing sway upon Alex results ultimately in the confused lover pulling away and seemingly breaking off their love affair. And Xenia’s further attempt to hook him up with a gallery owner friend, ends in Alex cutting ties all those who love him most.

     I’d suggest given the truly traumatic events which, unfortunately the feature film does not more fully explore, that the film’s sudden shift to what is more predictable tends to make all that follows rather hollow. Of course, Alex does begin to sketch again, this time including large drawings of his former school-teacher lover as well as Sebastien. Sebastien and Xenia are on the list to the gallery opening, and, as expected, friendship and love are renewed.

     The fact that Alex has been refusing to deal with Nelson’s cellphone calls all this while, brings him back early from his trip as he confronts Alex only to find his cousin in his bed. Alex once more scoffs at the drama, but this time it is Sebastian who storms off insisting that if he doesn’t try to make peace with Nelson his entire family in Argentina and Canada will end up hating and excommunicating him. Fortunately, the aunt with whom he is boarding, is wise and accepting of her nephew’s being gay and his new love.

     Nelson wants nothing to do with either of them, and by the end of the film hints at why Alex may have wanted to break up in the first place. But in a movie titled Sebastian you know the two week-long lovers at least have to make up in time to see the title character off on his trip home.

     Without even knowing it, Sebastian has booked, as all clever Torontoans do, a plane out of Buffalo, which gives Alex another day to tour Sebastian around town, this time in the not so tourist friendly town of Buffalo. They have Buffalo wings, of course, and walk around the old theatre district for the day before it’s time for one more long kiss and a quick drive—Alex, despite his new sense of openness, almost showing his impatience to get his friend on the plane on time—to the airport.

     Sebastian certainly provides him with other possibilities. He could stay on or Alex could come with him to Argentina. And when their borrowed car won’t start, we just know the time has come for Alex to commit to the love to which he has already surrendered. Still, he desperately hails down a taxi and they arrive at the airport, Alex barely even offering up a hug before Sebastian turns to go out of his life forever.

      Fortunately, Fanizza has seen Sleepless in Seattle and maybe even the original version An Affair to Remember, and a short distance after the cab pulls away, Alex orders the driver to stop, jumps out of the taxi, and runs back into the airport to make a choice we knew he must.

      The power of romantic love is restored to its proper place in this gay rom-com.

      But I’m still haunted by how to deal with the death of a man for loving a younger boy who was perfectly aware and willing to return that love, and troubled by what it means for societies to continue to allow such incidents to happen, to destroy reputations, lives, and human beings for feeling the same emotions. Children are not imagined to have logical minds or deep passions, and are most certainly denied the very illogical and somewhat hurtful love which this film promotes.

 

Los Angeles, May 8, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2023).