A smart film about sex? Lewin proves it’s possible
LOS ANGELES — On paper it sounds like a misguided collaboration between the Lifetime network and the Playboy Channel— a 36-year old paralytic who spends most of his time in an iron lung hires a sex surrogate to help him lose his virginity. Based on a true story, to boot.
Miraculously, The Sessions avoids the kind of squickyness that Hollywood usually drizzles over its uplifting movies about the physically challenged, mainly because its subject, poet and journalist Mark O’Brien, was in real life far too smart and self deprecating for that kind of sentimental head-patting.
(Just watch Jessica Yu’s extraordinary Oscar-winning short Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien for a sampling of the actual guy’s wit and forthrightness.)
In this fictionalized film, we see news footage of O’Brien zipping through a college campus on a motorized gurney before we’re introduced to John Hawkes playing the writer.
Assigned an article about Sex and the Disabled, O’Brien soon realizes he’s in way over his head, given that, for all his intellectual growth, he’s still a virgin. (A childhood polio sufferer, O’Brien was unable to move anything below his neck although, as we learn soon enough, he was more than capable of erections and orgasms.)
Along comes sex therapist and surrogate Cheryl (Helen Hunt) to teach Mark about his own body, not to mention the bodies of women; she makes it clear from the get-go that he is limited to no more than six sessions with her and that she has very strict boundaries regarding her private life. As you might expect, however, those boundaries start wobbling a bit, as the married Cheryl finds herself having feelings for Mark.
Since the movie’s not about Cheryl, and we don’t know how her sessions with Mark are different from the ones she’s had with previous clients, we have to take it on faith that Mark is so very special as to make this professional bend her own rules. It’s something of a leap, but Hawkes’ charismatic performance helps fill in the gaps of the screenplay by director Ben Lewin.
Given the obvious physical challenges of the role, Hawkes creates a memorable performance.
He’s got great chemistry with his costars, particularly Moon Bloodgood (dryly amusing as one of Mark’s caretakers) and Hunt.
The power of Hawkes’ scenes with Hunt and Bloodgood is worth mentioning because where The Sessions goes awry is in the many instances in which Mark pours out his heart to parish priest Father Brendan (William H. Macy). It’s a clunky way to communicate Mark’s innermost feelings.
Smart films about sex are as rare as intelligent cinematic explorations of the lives of the differently abled, so for The Sessions to accomplish both so well makes it the movie equivalent of Halley’s Comet.