Chris Knipp
11-08-2012, 04:30 PM
Ben Lewin: THE SESSIONS (2012)
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/911/ZUVh1W.jpg
JOHN HAWKES AND HELEN HUNT IN THE SESSIONS
Love conquers all
The Sessions has an approach to sex that's both clinical and touching, as it must be, because its protagonist Mark O'Brien (noted character actor John Hawkes) is a polio victim who's almost completely helpless. Though he spends most of his life in an iron lung, he is not at all without physical sensation, and certainly not without physical desire, or a tendency to fall in love with women. So, at 36 and on the suggestion of his therapist and with the permission of his priest Father Brendan (William H. Macy), he seeks the help of a sex surrogate called Cheryl Cohen Green (a brave and radiant Helen Hunt, 49, and frequently naked on screen) to lose his virginity. The "sessions" with Cheryl are to be limited to six. They are unbearably terrifying and exciting for Mark. The physicality is awkward and intense. What happens for Mark is lovely. This film may seem manipulative but you'd have to be pretty mean to resist. It's also saved from the maudlin or grim by Mark's ironic wit. "I believe in a God with a sense of humor," he says, later adding, "I would find it absolutely intolerable not to be able to blame someone for all of this." Though he can move only his head, he is never at a loss for a quick riposte. This is a huge crowd pleaser that can make you weep. It may limit itself too much, but in its small, important area, it goes deep. Because of its fearless and moving treatment of an unusual but important topic, it deserves wide recognition.
O'Brien is a real person, now deceased, was a poet and journalist in Berkeley. He got a degree at UC Berkeley, riding to class in a motorized gurney that we see in the introduction. By the time of the events, the gurney had been outlawed because he couldn't really see to steer and had caused several accidents. The Sessions is based on an article in The Sun (http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/174/on_seeing_a_sex_surrogate?page=2)that O'Brien wrote in 1990, four years after his time with Cheryl, and also on the rest of his autobiography, of which the article became a chapter. The film expands the context somewhat, offering home scenes of Cheryl with her husband Josh (Adam Arkin) and teenage son Tony (Jarrod Bailey). When Cheryl lies down in bed next to Josh at nights after sessions with Mark we wonder: maybe what's going on with her client is more intense? That's why sex surrogates see their clients only for a limited number of times.
The regular meetings Mark has with Father Brendan are a device, and Macy isn't even very believable as a Catholic priest, though he's sweet and sympathetic enough so you may wish all priests were like that. They're necessary to show more about Mark's intense psychological obstacles to the sexual experience he so much desires, to supplement the humiliating orgasms he has so often when being bathed by his personal assistants. Those assistants too, notably Amanda (Annika Marks), Vera (Moon Bloodgood) and Rod (W. Earl Brown), are important in the story, notably Amanda, who has a boyfriend and is scared away by Mark's marriage proposal, touching off his desire for a more complete relationship with a woman. Sexual relations, he finds, when working on an article, are quite common among the disabled people of Berkeley, spoken for by the feisty Carmen (Jennifer Kumiyama). Nonetheless he has intense misgivings, thoroughly chronicled in his article, presented here in voiceover and the dialogues with the priest.
Lewin shows each session in frank detail, though not as much so as O'Brien's article goes into. Openness is mainly signaled through the dialogue and Cheryl's regular disrobing. They both do get naked in bed together. Mark's experience shown to be a mixture of awkwardness, fear, embarrassment, and delight. The movies makes it clear these meetings are special for Cheryl as well as for Mark. As played by Hawkes, he's a charmer, a person of admirable spirit and humanity, as well as humor and honesty. Hunt, in these scenes and the ones at home with family or recording notes on the sessions into a portable cassette recorder, gives a performance that's restrained, giving, and intelligent. These scenes are all the more emotional and raw for focusing on specific details, notably Mark's problem with premature ejaculation.
Lewin's choice of the able-bodied Hawkes to play the disabled man might be questioned by advocates of the disabled, but it may help the general audience to relate to the more universal aspects of the experience, which concerns shame and guilt and parental disapproval and other obstacles to sex, not just overcoming disability. It's fascinating to see Hawkes' sweet, vulnerable performance when audiences currently remember him as the rural gangster in Winter's Bone and the sinister cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene. His craft shows in how much he can do moving only from the neck up, and his smallish, scrawny body stands in well for O'Brien's polio-damaged one. Lewin himself had childhood polio and walks with crutches, though he saw that initially as another kind of handicap to overcome, the danger of bias.
The Sessions has some detractors, notably David Denby in his short New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/the_sessions_lewin) notice, claiming "the filmmakers know that their therapeutic approach to lust is a bit creepy and they try to joke their way out of it," but "they don't succeed." It's true Lewin, who also wrote the screenplay, relies on humor, but he shows a consistently light touch with not only Mark's ready comebacks but also dry exchanges between Vera and a deadpan clerk (Ming Lo) who becomes interested in her at the motel where Mark and Cheryl's later sessions take place. The quesiness, mayhap, is in the eye of the beholder. The movie ends on an upbeat note quite different from the way O'Brien's article ends, but it may be wise in eschewing his gloom to present a story that's sex-positive and life-affirming and celebrates the man's poetry, his bravery, and his life. And shows it's never too late to lose your virginity.
The Sessions, 95 min., debuted at Sundance, where it got the Audience Award and Fox Searchlight picked it up; it also had Toronto, London, and other festival showings. It has gotten extremely strong reviews (Metacritic rating 80). Limited US release began Oct. 19, 2012; it comes later to many other countries, including the UK 18 Jan. 2013 and France 6 March.
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/911/ZUVh1W.jpg
JOHN HAWKES AND HELEN HUNT IN THE SESSIONS
Love conquers all
The Sessions has an approach to sex that's both clinical and touching, as it must be, because its protagonist Mark O'Brien (noted character actor John Hawkes) is a polio victim who's almost completely helpless. Though he spends most of his life in an iron lung, he is not at all without physical sensation, and certainly not without physical desire, or a tendency to fall in love with women. So, at 36 and on the suggestion of his therapist and with the permission of his priest Father Brendan (William H. Macy), he seeks the help of a sex surrogate called Cheryl Cohen Green (a brave and radiant Helen Hunt, 49, and frequently naked on screen) to lose his virginity. The "sessions" with Cheryl are to be limited to six. They are unbearably terrifying and exciting for Mark. The physicality is awkward and intense. What happens for Mark is lovely. This film may seem manipulative but you'd have to be pretty mean to resist. It's also saved from the maudlin or grim by Mark's ironic wit. "I believe in a God with a sense of humor," he says, later adding, "I would find it absolutely intolerable not to be able to blame someone for all of this." Though he can move only his head, he is never at a loss for a quick riposte. This is a huge crowd pleaser that can make you weep. It may limit itself too much, but in its small, important area, it goes deep. Because of its fearless and moving treatment of an unusual but important topic, it deserves wide recognition.
O'Brien is a real person, now deceased, was a poet and journalist in Berkeley. He got a degree at UC Berkeley, riding to class in a motorized gurney that we see in the introduction. By the time of the events, the gurney had been outlawed because he couldn't really see to steer and had caused several accidents. The Sessions is based on an article in The Sun (http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/174/on_seeing_a_sex_surrogate?page=2)that O'Brien wrote in 1990, four years after his time with Cheryl, and also on the rest of his autobiography, of which the article became a chapter. The film expands the context somewhat, offering home scenes of Cheryl with her husband Josh (Adam Arkin) and teenage son Tony (Jarrod Bailey). When Cheryl lies down in bed next to Josh at nights after sessions with Mark we wonder: maybe what's going on with her client is more intense? That's why sex surrogates see their clients only for a limited number of times.
The regular meetings Mark has with Father Brendan are a device, and Macy isn't even very believable as a Catholic priest, though he's sweet and sympathetic enough so you may wish all priests were like that. They're necessary to show more about Mark's intense psychological obstacles to the sexual experience he so much desires, to supplement the humiliating orgasms he has so often when being bathed by his personal assistants. Those assistants too, notably Amanda (Annika Marks), Vera (Moon Bloodgood) and Rod (W. Earl Brown), are important in the story, notably Amanda, who has a boyfriend and is scared away by Mark's marriage proposal, touching off his desire for a more complete relationship with a woman. Sexual relations, he finds, when working on an article, are quite common among the disabled people of Berkeley, spoken for by the feisty Carmen (Jennifer Kumiyama). Nonetheless he has intense misgivings, thoroughly chronicled in his article, presented here in voiceover and the dialogues with the priest.
Lewin shows each session in frank detail, though not as much so as O'Brien's article goes into. Openness is mainly signaled through the dialogue and Cheryl's regular disrobing. They both do get naked in bed together. Mark's experience shown to be a mixture of awkwardness, fear, embarrassment, and delight. The movies makes it clear these meetings are special for Cheryl as well as for Mark. As played by Hawkes, he's a charmer, a person of admirable spirit and humanity, as well as humor and honesty. Hunt, in these scenes and the ones at home with family or recording notes on the sessions into a portable cassette recorder, gives a performance that's restrained, giving, and intelligent. These scenes are all the more emotional and raw for focusing on specific details, notably Mark's problem with premature ejaculation.
Lewin's choice of the able-bodied Hawkes to play the disabled man might be questioned by advocates of the disabled, but it may help the general audience to relate to the more universal aspects of the experience, which concerns shame and guilt and parental disapproval and other obstacles to sex, not just overcoming disability. It's fascinating to see Hawkes' sweet, vulnerable performance when audiences currently remember him as the rural gangster in Winter's Bone and the sinister cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene. His craft shows in how much he can do moving only from the neck up, and his smallish, scrawny body stands in well for O'Brien's polio-damaged one. Lewin himself had childhood polio and walks with crutches, though he saw that initially as another kind of handicap to overcome, the danger of bias.
The Sessions has some detractors, notably David Denby in his short New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/the_sessions_lewin) notice, claiming "the filmmakers know that their therapeutic approach to lust is a bit creepy and they try to joke their way out of it," but "they don't succeed." It's true Lewin, who also wrote the screenplay, relies on humor, but he shows a consistently light touch with not only Mark's ready comebacks but also dry exchanges between Vera and a deadpan clerk (Ming Lo) who becomes interested in her at the motel where Mark and Cheryl's later sessions take place. The quesiness, mayhap, is in the eye of the beholder. The movie ends on an upbeat note quite different from the way O'Brien's article ends, but it may be wise in eschewing his gloom to present a story that's sex-positive and life-affirming and celebrates the man's poetry, his bravery, and his life. And shows it's never too late to lose your virginity.
The Sessions, 95 min., debuted at Sundance, where it got the Audience Award and Fox Searchlight picked it up; it also had Toronto, London, and other festival showings. It has gotten extremely strong reviews (Metacritic rating 80). Limited US release began Oct. 19, 2012; it comes later to many other countries, including the UK 18 Jan. 2013 and France 6 March.