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Friday, October 19, 2012

MOVIE REVIEW
The Sessions

When Words Stimulate As The Body Sometimes Doesn't



John Hawkes as Mark and Helen Hunt as Cheryl in Ben Lewin's drama "The Sessions".
Fox Searchlight

    

by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Friday, October 19, 2012

Ben Lewin writes and directs "The Sessions", inspired by Mark O'Brien's true story as a 36-year-old virgin.  Confined to an iron lung (a heavy iron contraption that encases a person with breathing apparatus) after being stricken with polio at age 6, Mr. O'Brien became a poet and journalist at the University Of California at Berkeley. 

The film presents two moderately arrested figures: Mark (John Hawkes), who speaks in mild, halting ways because of his polio, and Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a married sex therapist who speaks few words to her husband, and Mr. Lewin explores a beautiful relationship and love story between the two.  Mark is familiar with rejection.  He pines for the attractive women who have taken care of him over the years, and talks to a priest (played humorously by William H. Macy) about his struggles with the opposite sex.  (A third figure in "The Sessions" is its prurient viewing audience, symbolized by a hotel manager who asks for details about exactly what is happening in one of his hotel rooms between Cheryl and Mark.) 

One of the finest things about "The Sessions", a very sincere and genuine film, is that it takes seriously at all times the intimacy and bridge to sexual liberation that Mark, a very charming and sensual man, craves.  It is an adult drama that avoids the type of wallowing in despair and self-pity that often drowns similar characters and other films of this type.  Mark is a self-deprecating man, completely comfortable in his own skin even as he's trapped by his condition.  Mark sees polio not so much as a challenge but as a spiritual gateway to deeper expressions of his feelings.  He's a vividly alive, self-aware being.  Mark is a man without the rite of passage of sex, yet he's more mature and emotionally deeper and connected than many men who've experienced the joy of sex.

Helen Hunt plays Cheryl as a matter-of-fact, uninhibited being without any hint of idiosyncracy, gimmickry or guru-ism, if you will.  Resplendent, thoughtful and never condescending, Cheryl is confident though susceptible as she struggles with her own feelings for Mark, a man very passionate with words.  As you'd expect from a sex therapist, Cheryl speaks frankly and in an explicit, mature way about sex.

By extension "The Sessions" avoids infantilized sex talk ("For A Good Time Call...") or nervous sex speak ("Hope Springs").  The film isn't awkward about its subject matter; both actors are seen naked.  Mr. Lewin, to his credit, refuses to take short cuts as a writer or director here.  There's no other way to depict this story without presenting it in a sensible, dignified fashion.  I was pleased to see this often funny and gentle film about feelings, fantasy and fate unfold in such a refreshing way, and there was never a moment where I felt I was being cheated or Mark's condition exploited.  In all respects this is a tasteful, articulate film about senses, sex and relationships.

"The Sessions" is a well-modulated merger of the power of the mind and the freedom of the body.  Well-acted by Ms. Hunt and even better performed by Mr. Hawkes, in a role a complete 180 degrees from his customary brooding, malevolent characters ("Winter's Bone", "Martha Marcy May Marlene"), "The Sessions" is one of the great film sensations of 2012.  Few American films these days do such a sterling job telling a touching story for grown ups while entertaining and consulting the varying degrees of the human condition around sex and expression -- the former an often nervy topic for some American moviegoers -- than this one.

Also with: Moon Bloodgood, Rhea Perlman, Annika Marks, Robin Weigert, Jennifer Kumiyama, Blake Lindsley, Rusty Schwimmer, Ming Lo, W. Earl Brown.

"The Sessions" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for streong sexuality including graphic nudity and frank dialogue.  The film's running time is one hour and 35 minutes.  

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