On paper, “The Sessions” is kind of an icky topic. How do you make a feel-good comedy about a paraplegic trying to lose his virginity and not make it completely gross, if not exploitative?
Well, you have to make the lead character relatable, and John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien displays a congenial sense of humor, emotional range with very little movement and always seems natural, never “constantly acting” like he’s Daniel-Day Lewis in “My Left Foot.”
So “The Sessions” is warm, relatable, funny and well acted, but it deigns to only be a crowd pleaser when it could be an insightful look at disabilities.
It’s about a guy who contracted polio at a young age and now has no control over any of his muscles below his neck. He lives in an iron lung and can only go out for four hours a day, but he managed to graduate college and become a poet. This is all a true story by the way.
After firing an aide and being heartbroken by a new one, Mark confides in a priest (William H. Macy) to ask if it would be alright if he had sex with a sex therapist before marriage. The sex surrogate, as she is called, is the lovely Cheryl (Helen Hunt), and her prescription is six, two hour sessions in which she helps him explore the feelings of his body, control his ability to ejaculate and ultimately achieve, ahem, “full penetration” and “simultaneous orgasm.”
Although Mark has a major, physical disability, the thing that really cripples him is his fear of sex, intimacy and ultimately being alone. “I love you, but I’m not in love with you,” he says to his priest, parroting the answer he usually gets from women. He expresses thoughts that will make his plight very accessible to both men and women. His worries are brought out by his religion, his childhood trauma of dealing with polio and his bookish interpretation of sex.
Do these traits make him unique? Maybe not. He’s not defined by his physical disability, always a no-no in terms of movie characters portrayed with them, but we don’t get the insight we get in something like “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” another film about a writer trapped in his own body who also has a wicked sense of humor. That film takes us inside the head of its character and doesn’t just paint him as an average Joe afraid of sex.
Part of this theme of romantic anxieties is strengthened by the presence of Cheryl. “The Sessions” is as much about her as it is about Mark. It paints her as a woman in a sexless, unexciting marriage and charts her own coming-of-age to overcome her fears of commitment to Mark. You’ll notice that when she’s helping Mark, he’s always on the right side of the bed, she on the left. When she returns home, it’s the opposite. She too is in a position of need.
It might all work a little better if the movie weren’t so awkward about sex. Most of the supporting characters have bad experiences with it, treating it with disdain and dry humor. Mark’s new aide Vera (Moon Bloodgood) uses the word “dick” instead of “penis.” “Why do you call it a dick,” Mark asks. “Because penis sounds like a vegetable you don’t want to eat.” And every reaction to a smutty comment is always granted the same blank look of uncertainty that Mark would return.
Hawkes is the best part of “The Sessions.” He has a way of striking the pose of strain, veins popping, head looking up and away, and still we know when he’s joking, confused or nervous. He doesn’t suddenly show unreasonable amounts of expressiveness. And for a disabled performance, Hawkes is fairly understated and doesn’t have a real “money moment,” which is a plus in the believability department.
The believability is exactly what makes “The Sessions” such a crowd pleaser. It’s not about disability, but in avoiding that it finds likely characters with understandable flaws. It’s as charming as its stars.
3 stars
1 thought on “CIFF Review: The Sessions”