The Sessions is a true story about the life of Mark O’Brien and his relationships with three different women in the last years of his life. Starring John Hawkes as Mark O’Brien, this film was written in memory of him and based on his article “Seeing a Sex Surrogate.”He was a paraplegic and diagnosed with polio at the age of six. He lived in Berkeley, Calif. with the help of an iron lung that he couldn’t be away from for more than four hours a day. His illness physically incapacitated him from the neck down. However, his mental faculties left him with inspiring intelligence and extremely witty comments on his life and those that were in it.O’Brien, like any red-blooded American man, had sex on the brain. Unfortunately for him, sex happened to be something that, at the age of 37, he had not been able to execute due to his illness. He lived with the realization that for most people with polio the average life expectancy is 10 years. He knew his time was always running out, so his dying wish was to do the deed before he was incapacitated for good.What resulted was one of the most heartfelt journeys I’ve ever heard. Director and screenwriter Ben Lewin wrote from the heart and the funny bone while educating audiences about finding love in the bleakest of circumstance and knowing how to laugh through life.
The story began with a shaky documentary rolling with the opening credits about how O’Brien went through life up until this point at age 36 in the year 1988. The director placed dynamic opening shots of the lung machine next to O’Brien while he confessed his most inner thoughts to the picture of Virgin Mary on his wall.
He had two caretakers that lived with him that took 12-hour shifts to provide O’Brien with around the clock care. He was a poet and journalist during his time with the iron lung, and his cat, priest and caretakers were his only companions. That is, until he found the answer to his sexual prayers. Cheryl, a sexual surrogate his therapist referred to him, has sex with physically disabled people she calls clients. Her clients are people that are unable to have healthy sex lives or sex at all. She helps them become more comfortable with their disability through body awareness and appreciation. Their first session was discomfited when O’Brien left the money on the table like Cheryl was a common prostitute. They were only allowed to have six sessions together to keep from becoming emotionally attached to one another. The first time they tried to initiate in physical contact, it was awkward because Cheryl hurt him while undressing him because she was not use to his level of muscle atrophy. Regardless of the intense start, they had a satisfying time which came across as more emotionally intimate than anything else.
Although, love ensued even more than emotional attachment. Love always comes with a price. Cheryl was married and had a kid, while O’Brien was unable to un-correlate sex with love. The turmoil continued when Cheryl’s husband found the love poem addressed to her. The actors’ emotional connection was so real at times that I found myself forgetting about O’Brien’s disability.
All of their interactions were so touching that it felt like I was also experiencing the heartbreak.
The Sessions was heavily narrated to allow O’Brien to express himself. The narration provided tirades of comical relief which created masterful juxtaposition to potential awkward scenes.
Regardless of the difficulty of watching a man struggle through something that the majority of other people get to experience normally, Hawkes delivered a subtly perfect character. But the true stars were the writers. This screenplay is masterful and the writing is laugh-out-loud worthy. The Sessions is not unlike O’Brien’s iron lung. Sometimes life takes our breath away, but the survival of love pulls us through the dark times.
Critic’s Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Seannon Nichols can be reached at snichols12392@yahoo.com.