THE SESSIONS (2013)0

Written by Yue Jie

Directed by: Ben Lewin
Genre: Drama
Running time: 95 min­utes
Classification: R21 – Sexual Content
Release date: 24 January 2013
Rating: 3/5

“Although the aim is for us to have sex, I’m not a prostitute.”

To kick this off, I have not seen any other film that has as much sex as this, where the plot is dri­ven by sex quite lit­er­ally. Based on the arti­cle “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate” by Mark O’Brien, The Sessions tells the expe­ri­ences of a poet suf­fer­ing from polio, as he hires a sex sur­ro­gate to help lose his vir­gin­ity, albeit to inevitable emo­tional side effects. Written and directed by Ben Lewin (Georgia, 1988), Lewin is also a polio sur­vivor himself.

John Hawkes stars as Mark, the 38-year-old who is paral­ysed from neck down and sur­vives in an iron lung. He leads his mun­dane life every­day being pushed around by his atten­dant as he goes to church and befriends Carmen (Jennifer Kumiyama), a fel­low dis­abled. This occurs for years until one day, Mark gets a call about a sex ther­apy that he is invited to par­tic­i­pate in. He seeks the therapist’s help to ful­fill his desire of los­ing his vir­gin­ity and is, in turn, referred to a sex sur­ro­gate, one who will come to be the main change in his life. Being strapped to his bed all the time, Hawkes plays Mark con­vinc­ingly, giv­ing a sense of assur­ance in his voice.

Writer, direc­tor and Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt (Then She Found Me, 2007) plays Cheryl Cohen-Greene, the sex sur­ro­gate will­ing to help Mark have sex for the first time. At nearly 50, Hunt appears in the nude for most of the screen time and view­ers would be pleased to know she isn’t an eye­sore. Mark and Cheryl are sched­uled to have up to 6 ses­sions together, with each ses­sion tar­geted to help Mark grad­u­ally over­come his fear of pre­ma­ture ejac­u­la­tion, with which he has no con­trol over, and even­tu­ally achieve sex­ual pleasure.

Along the way, both Mark and Cheryl approach guide­books on sex and gen­i­talia sep­a­rately each night after every ses­sion and prior to the next ses­sion, an ironic coin­ci­dence. This serves as a form of sex­ual edu­ca­tion on top of the con­stant sex in The Sessions and Cheryl’s fam­ily is either really igno­rant about her occu­pa­tion or unusu­ally non­cha­lant about it. Stripping down for all to see and still being able to remain calm and sym­pa­thetic onscreen, Hunt is indeed wor­thy of her Oscar nom­i­na­tion for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

William H. Macy (The Deal, 2008) plays Father Brendan, the priest whom Mark vis­its to have occa­sional chats about life. Despite his reli­gious author­ity, Father Brendan isn’t as holy as he should be, as he smokes and encour­ages Mark to lose his vir­gin­ity after decid­ing that he really desires to. Moon Bloodgood (Bedrooms, 2010) plays Vera, Mark’s atten­dant who takes care of his daily needs after Mark fires his ini­tial atten­dant when he realises that she thinks he needs her more than she needs him.

Having gone through polio, Lewin’s vision of The Sessions is unde­ni­ably as accu­rate as pos­si­ble as he puts him­self in Mark’s shoes. However, the mate­r­ial he touches on and the sen­si­tiv­ity of the topic is unfor­tu­nately a lit­tle over the top, as not every­one can actu­ally relate to it.

As much as it is about busi­ness, emo­tions are bound to arise in issues of sex­u­al­ity and Cheryl finds her­self in a predica­ment which she tries to draw the line in. I’ll leave you to fig­ure out the out­come. For what it’s worth, this indie drama tries to cap­ture view­ers’ emo­tions by the even­tual pass­ing of Mark in the final act and leaves view­ers to decide whether or not to sym­pa­thise in Mark’s sit­u­a­tion at all.

Check out the trailer below!