Latest news with #Finnish-British
India Today
01-06-2025
- Sport
- India Today
French Open 2025: Indian challenge ends after Rohan Bopanna and Yuki Bhambri crash out
India's campaign at the 2025 French Open came to an end on Sunday, as Rohan Bopanna and Yuki Bhambri bowed out in the third round of the men's doubles with their respective partners. Veteran Bopanna, partnering Czech player Adam Pavlsek, fought valiantly but lost 2-6, 6-7(5) to the in-form second-seeded duo of Harri Helivaara and Henry Patten. Ranked third and fourth in the world respectively, the Finnish-British pair held firm in key moments despite a spirited second-set challenge from the Indo-Czech and Patten started strong, storming to a 5-1 lead in the opening set with a double break. The Finn served out the set to love, sealing it with an overhead smash. Bopanna and Pavlsek responded well in the second set, with the Indian holding serve to love in his first service game. However, their only opening came at 2-3 when Patten began game six with a double fault and fell behind 0-30. The Briton, though, recovered with four straight points to avert the Open Day 8 Live With neither side able to force a break, the set went to a tie-break, where the second seeds edged ahead. Helivaara struck a stunning return winner on the first match point to secure in the day, Yuki Bhambri and his American partner Robert Galloway were beaten 4-6, 4-6 by the ninth-seeded American duo of Christian Harrison and Evan King. An early break put Bhambri and Galloway on the back foot in the first set. They showed resilience, saving four set points in game nine after being 0-40 down, but Harrison served out the set despite falling behind 4-4 in the second set, Bhambri dropped serve - a decisive moment in the match. He sent a smash long at 30-all before Galloway netted a volley on break point. Serving for the match, King closed it out after Bhambri netted a return and Galloway hit another earlier exits for N Sriram Balaji and Rithvik Bollipalli, the defeats of Bopanna and Bhambri marked the end of India's run in the men's doubles draw at Roland the junior event, 17-year-old Manas Dhamne - widely regarded as one of India's brightest young prospects - was ousted in the first round of the boys' singles. Having come through qualifying, Dhamne lost 5-7, 3-6 to fellow qualifier Ronit Karki of the United States. The teenager struggled to find rhythm and fell short of expectations on the is still a glimmer of hope in the junior draw, as Hitesh Chauhan - another Indian qualifier - is scheduled to face Sweden's Ludvig Fredrik Hede in his opening match.
The Guardian
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sebastian review – journalist turned sex-worker aims to turn side-hustle into art
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 into bare-all prose he hopes to parlay into a bestselling novel. But it's not clear what's motivating him; perhaps it's vanity, and his own professional advancement is the real story. Or, with his unreliability increasingly jeopardising his job, is there a deeper personal validation behind his secret app life? Mäkelä only seems half-interested in the realities and dangers of sex work, compared with something like the far rawer 2018 French hustler drama Sauvage. Such things would presumably feature in Max's writing, the particularities of which – only relayed in a few generic-sounding excerpts – don't register significantly here. It's more the larger struggle to transmute life into art that concerns the director, with Ellis as something of a touchstone (there's a Patrick Bateman-referencing shot of Max checking out his own musculature). But Mäkelä is too in bed with his protagonist's objectives to develop the kind of perspective that might yield richer insights into the life/art trade-off. Max's epiphany, via a deepening relationship with timid academic Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde), is critiqued by his publisher as too pat an ending for his book. With the film partly caught in this self-referentiality, it doesn't develop much beyond a vague treatise on the cost of pseudonymous exploitation. At least the director's identification with his lead character results in a strong performance from Mollica; ever present in head-and-shoulders closeup and meticulously high-strung with an array of wary smiles, nervous swallows and evasive glances. Sebastian is in UK and Irish cinemas from 4 April.
