It seems that the difference between a sex surrogate, someone who will comfort you and coax you through your anxiety-ridden first time, and a prostitute is that the former can put you on a payment plan and is ensured six sessions. The latter has to work for her repeat business. Neither is supposed to get emotionally attached, and both are there to help someone fulfill their wishes. When the former happens in 1989, we have Pretty Woman; in 2012, The Sessions.
I don’t mean to mislead here; The Sessions is better than Pretty Woman. Better written, better acted, better all around, but there’s something about the inclusion of “forbidden love” that deters me from the movie’s primary point: the body is both a source of inclusion and exclusion, pleasure and shame, pride and humiliation.
Based on the life of journalist / poet Mark O’Brien, The Sessions explores his research for the article “On Seeing a Sex Surrogate,” a writing assignment that built from an investigation of “Sex and the Disabled.” Being severely disabled, O’Brien (John Hawkes in a role sure to garner a well-deserved Oscar nomination) has never had sex, in part because it would force him and the other person to acknowledge his crippled existence. Here, there is something that goes beyond the eliciting of sympathy. There is a deeper sadness because he only appears to be quadriplegic. In truth, he suffered from polio, so his muscles are extremely weak, which necessitates a gurney for transportation and an iron lung to fight off the oppressive gravity that holds him still.
In effect, he has full physical sensation all over his body, but has no one to touch him — at least, outside of the rough and perfunctory daily bathing. There is no way to make this appear worse or better than someone who can feel nothing, but O’Brien’s desire to be touched (because he can feel it and enjoy it) while no one touches him because they view him as a numb piece of furniture conjures a sympathy within that I hadn’t felt before. The torture on O’Brien’s face as he wants to hold Cheryl (Helen Hunt, his sex surrogate) or put his arm around Amanda (a former caregiver who leaves when O’Brien confesses that he loves her) is palpable, not to the point of tears, but of bewilderment – my own that I cannot imagine, in the state I am right now, being all-aware of my surroundings – the draft in my living room, the cat rubbing against my leg, or the keys under my fingers as I type – and being unable to move – away from the draft, to touch the cat, to slam the keypad.
This role is a grand achievement for Hawkes who has previously garnered acclaim as a meth head and a cult leader. His voice is strained and oxygen-deprived, squeaky and meek, yet there is a lilting voice throughout that injects humor into a scenario where humor would seem prohibited. His role is the antithesis of Javier Bardem’s in The Sea Inside. Bardem is masterful as Ramon Sampedro, a man determined to end his paralyzed existence, but Hawkes’ O’Brien makes you want to imbibe life and applaud his endeavors before death.
And maybe this is why I have a hard time saying The Sessions is an amazing movie. It’s certainly good; I might even say it’s solid, but the Patch Adams-like happiness makes me doubt its sincerity.
I suppose we’ve seen enough films in which we follow the crumbling protagonist through his labyrinth of depression and angst, and for eliding that, I admire The Sessions. Is it possible that O’Brien constantly saw the bright side? Is it a reality that the most pain felt by any characters in the movie were Amanda and Cheryl because they couldn’t – or didn’t think they should – love him back? I understand the respective hesitations (the former is in a relationship to an evidently-jealous boyfriend, and Cheryl is married with child), and I understand the appeal of O’Brien (sensitive, poetic, earnest, funny, optimistic), but does the professional that Cheryl purports herself to be fall so easily for this man? Similarly, is it believable that her husband transitions from hailing her a saint to becoming a jealous man on the verge of a cuckolding in a very short period of time? Is Amanda – in such a short stint as his caregiver – unable to resist his masculine wiles?
I suppose it’s possible, and I suppose that’s what writer / director Ben Lewin is trying to convince us.
And while I hate narrative monologues performed by dead protagonists, the movie is charming and sensitive. Hawkes is brilliant, Helen Hunt’s return to the screen is welcomed, and she reminds us that she has more roles in her like her turn in As Good as it Gets.
