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).
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