By the late '60s the spy film was already overplayed, forcing filmmakers to stand out among endless James Bond clones. David Greene's Sebastian (1968) grafts Mod hipness onto the banality of code breaking. Appealing stars make it watchable, despite its stylistic mishmash.Sebastian (Dirk Bogarde) runs an all-women team of MI6 code breakers. He recruits Becky Howard (Susannah York), who's alternately annoyed and intrigued by her mysterious boss. Sebastian keeps a troubled personality behind his tightly-wound exterior: he's distrusted by his superiors, inaccessible to employees, and hounded by a leftist ex-lover Elsa (Lilli Palmer) who threatens his career. Nonetheless, Sebastian proves indispensable when his boss (John Gielgud) comes across an uncrackable Soviet code that might cause (or prevent) war.
At a time when spy movies trended towards morbid cynicism (The Kremlin Letter, anyone?), Sebastian comes off as middle-management hip. Greene tries making file-sifting job seem cool and nifty, enlisting the ever-suave Dirk Bogarde, stylish Susannah York (driving a WWII-issue jeep) and funky Jerry Goldsmith score. Sebastian and Becky flirt in nightclubs and underwear stores, arguing over wallpaper and classical music. Bureaucracy never seemed sexier.
While scenarist Gerald Vaughan-Hughes occasionally grasps at wit, Sebastian doesn't gel. Most of the film focuses on Sebastian and Becky's courtship, which is serviceably bland. To ballast this mediocrity, Sebastian plumbs subplots with ostensibly more weight. Sebastian's relationship with the suspect Elsa provides some dramatic ballast, but the third act code-cracking seems an abrupt left turn. Admittedly, this last does raise the dramatic stakes beyond dolly bird escapism - at least until a goofball LSD trip apropos of nothing.
Dirk Bogarde breezes through with his aging matinee idol charm at full blaze. Greene gives Bogarde few scenes to flex his dramatic muscles, most shared with the pitch-perfect Lilli Palmer. Susannah York makes a perky partner, snappy and sexy, though her agency's limited to redecorating Bogarde's apartment. John Gielgud and Nigel Davenport dependably play crusty bureaucrats. Donald Sutherland briefly plays an American yokel.
It's a shame that Sebastian doesn't amount to more than it does. It's watchable but frivolous, froth toned higher than Dirk Bogarde's pompadour.
