Director: Mikko Mäkelä

Stars: Ruaridh Mollica, Jiftu Quasem, Jonathan Hyde, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Dylan Brady

Finnish London based filmmaker Mikko Mäkelä’s film is an undercooked charter study elevated by an impressive central performance from Ruaridh Mollica. He is Max, a young Scottish journalist and aspiring novelist, working in London. Max is impatient for his life as a novelist to start, conscious that his writing idol Bret Easton Ellis completed his first book at the age of twenty-one. He is encouraged to use social media more to publicise himself but resists. Max does however sign up to gay hook-up sight Dreamy Guys, and using the pseudonym Sebastian to communicate, he utilises some of the text exchanges as material in his writing. Later he actually starts meeting up with men, favouring the older ones, such as kindly seventysometing aesthete Nicholas (Hyde), who did not come out until much later in his life. Max’s encounter at a chemsex session is slightly knottier. The book that results from his experiences sees him offered a deal by a publisher. However, as he gets deeper into the escort experience, the lines between himself and his alter ego begin to blur. Mäkelä avoids sensationalism with the sex scenes surprisingly tender and intimate, and while the atmosphere tends towards the dour and gloomy, Mollica is great, successfully conveying Max’s inner turmoil, even if the sometimes rote script does not rise to the occasion.

David Willoughby

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