The Sessions (film)

Plot

In Berkeley, California in 1988, Mark O'Brien is a poet who is forced to live in an iron lung due to complications from polio. Due to his condition, he has never had sex. After unsuccessfully proposing to his caretaker Amanda, and sensing he may be near death, he decides he wants to lose his virginity. After consulting his priest, Father Brendan, he gets in touch with Cheryl Cohen-Greene, a professional sex surrogate. She tells him they will have no more than six sessions together. They begin their sessions, but soon it is clear that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Cheryl's husband, who loves her deeply, fights to suppress his jealousy, at first withholding a love poem that Mark has sent by mail to Cheryl, which she eventually finds. After several attempts, Mark and Cheryl are able to have mutually satisfying sex, but decide to cut the sessions short on account of their burgeoning feelings.

One day sometime later, the power goes out in the building in which Mark lives, causing the iron lung to stop functioning and making it necessary for Mark to be rushed to the hospital. However, he survives and meets a young woman named Susan Fernbach. The film then cuts to Mark's funeral, held sometime later, and attended by four of the women he came to know and care for, including Cheryl. Father Brendan gives the homily and Susan reads the poem he had previously sent Cheryl.

Cast

Background

O'Brien was a journalist and poet who was paralyzed from the neck down by polio since his childhood. O'Brien breathed with the support of an iron lung for much of his life. At age 38, he hired sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene to help him lose his virginity. The film is based on an article O'Brien published about his experiences with Greene, "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate", which appeared in The Sun magazine in 1990.

O'Brien's life was chronicled in the 1996 short documentary Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien, directed by Jessica Yu, which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. He died in 1999 at the age of 49.

Development

Writer and director Ben Lewin, a polio survivor himself, first read about O'Brien's experiences with a sex surrogate from O'Brien's article "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate" on the Internet. He stumbled onto the article while researching sex and the disabled for a semi-autobiographical sitcom project. Lewin explained, "I felt that if I could do on film what he had done to me with his writing, then I could potentially deliver something powerful." While writing the script, Lewin drew from his own experiences with polio and worked closely with Susan Fernbach, O'Brien's partner during the last years of his life, and Cheryl Cohen Greene, the surrogate.

To simulate O'Brien's posture, John Hawkes used a soccer-ball-sized piece of foam which he laid onto the left side of his back in order to curve his spine. Consequently, some of his organs began to migrate, and he was told by his chiropractor that now his spine does not have enough movement. Nonetheless, he said it is "a minute amount of pain compared to what many disabled people face minute-to-minute." Hawkes also practiced dialing the phone using a "mouth stick".

Casting

Hawkes said Lewin met and read with several disabled actors to take on the role of O'Brien but said "none of them felt quite right" for the character. Hawkes was drawn to the script due to Lewin's own experiences as a polio survivor. He read every article written by O'Brien, every poem by O'Brien he could find and credited Breathing Lessons for helping with his preparation: "It's 25 minutes of Mark O'Brien speaking frankly and often emotionally about his life … him being washed, getting outside. It was just invaluable. It was such an insight to him, and his poetry is throughout that documentary as well."

Distribution and release

The Sessions premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival as The Surrogate. According to Rachel Dodes, "the energy in the room was palpable" and the cast received several standing ovations. Fox Searchlight Pictures immediately acquired the film, paying $6 million for worldwide rights to it, a fee considered unusually high. The film has grossed $6,002,451 in North America and $3,135,887 in other territories, totaling $9,138,338 worldwide. For its Spanish-language edition, the film was renamed Seis sesiones de sexo ("Six Sessions of Sex").

Reviews

The Sessions was considered one of the 2012 Sundance breakout hits. John Hawkes received two prolonged standing ovations at the film's screening. It was praised by critics at the festival as "accessible, enjoyable, and light-hearted".

Linda Holmes, writing for NPR, called the film's performances "uniformly terrific". Variety's Peter Debruge said, "performances are paramount in a film like this, and Hawkes works some kind of miracle despite the self-evident physical limitations of the role." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter said: "... most decisively, in audience terms, it argues in favor of living a full life, whatever one's personal constraints, of not being intimidated by societal or religious dogma or, most of all, by one's fears... Hawkes' full-bodied vocal and emotional characterization stands in stark contrast to his frail corporal presence. Hunt's performance may be physically bold but is equally marked by its maturity and composure." Kerry Weber of America Magazine criticized the depiction of the priest, saying: "His character constantly spouts platitudes that make him sound like his seminary training took place in the self-help section of Barnes & Noble." Weber also criticized the film for not adhering closely enough to the writings of the real-life Mark O'Brien. As such, the film does not give due attention to the complex subject matter. Weber says: "Unfortunately for the viewer, The Sessions doesn't make things quite complicated enough."

Awards

The film received the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic while the cast received a Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Both Hawkes and Hunt received Independent Spirit Awards for their performances. The Sessions won the Audience Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Ben Lewin received a nomination for Best International Direction at the 2nd AACTA International Awards, while Hawkes was nominated for Best International Actor.