OVP: The Sessions (2012)

Film: The Sessions (2012)
Stars: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Adam Arkin
Director: Ben Lewis
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Helen Hunt)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Sex.  You'd be hard-pressed to find a subject more discussed, and yet seemingly just as taboo as this human obsession.  Seriously-there isn't a day of your adult life that it isn't mentioned, talked about, discussed, shunned, celebrated, and everything in-between, and yet, when a movie like The Sessions comes out, it's still cause for an eyebrow raise.  The fun of Ben Lewis's flawed but very capable film is that he basically ignores that eyebrow raise, gaining only a couple of laughs out of it, and instead, makes an honest depiction of one man's extreme hang-ups about sex (and the woman who helps him through them), and shows what happens when we let go of our insecurities and are just ourselves instead.

The film takes place in the late 1980's, and is about a real-life man named Mark O'Brien (Hawkes), who is in an iron lung due to polio, and has throughout his life, defeated the odds.  He has lived to be 38, an age no doctor expected him to reach, is a working writer and poet, has received his college degree, and overall has a routine, if not always fulfilling life.  He's the sort of man who survives things, finds ways to make things work.  He's also a man of deep faith, which plays throughout the film as a secondary storyline (the film is structured as he's giving confession to a priest, played by Macy), but truly shapes his character.  He believes in a higher calling, and is having a crisis of conscience.  You see, Mark wants what we all want-love and intimacy with someone he cherishes.  The film's opening thirty minutes focus on his growing affection, which he unfortunately declares, for a woman who is working as his caretaker.  Once she spurns his advances, and after a long consultation with his priest, Mark decides to seek out the advice and counseling of a sex surrogate.

For those unfamiliar, a sex surrogate is not a prostitute and is not a sex therapist, but if we're being honest, borrows a teensy bit from both and melds the idea.  It's here where Lewis gets his most provocative idea of the film going, though clearly the idea of sex surrogates have been around for decades now.  A sex surrogate is a person who helps to counsel those people who have sexual hang-ups (like Mark) and does indeed engage in sexual intercourse with Mark, but only for a maximum of six sessions.  This differs, of course, from a prostitute, in that the sex surrogate doesn't want your return business, and there is a limit to how long they will be seeing each other.  It's a hard concept, I admit, to getting around, which makes the job of Helen Hunt (who plays the sex surrogate, Cheryl), that much more difficult-can she both convince us that this is a real, therapeutic professional (and not a lady of the night), all-the-while establishing her own story arch?

It's here that The Sessions gets its best attribute.  While a lot of the focus on this film has been on the physically-demanding work being done by Hawkes, who plays his character with great charm and fun, and is one of those character actors I'm so damn excited has come to great success, it's Hunt that steals the film.  Hunt isn't necessarily an actress that I gravitate toward-she's always been a bit too methodical for me, and I, like many others, thought her Best Actress trophy was given prematurely for As Good As It Gets.  Here, however, we are given a performance that makes me rethink a lot of her career.  She plays Cheryl as a woman of confidence and professionalism, a therapist free of judgment but not necessarily free of opinions.  We see the woman in a sturdy but no-longer romantic marriage, drawn to her patient, but never really exhibiting it in front of him.  Hunt nails the way that a woman who had been in this tricky job for so long would be able to balance her emotions, even when they are overpowering, to ensure that she is doing what is best for her client.  One of my great pet peeves is when what is good for the story gets lost in what the character's ingrained personality and obvious reactions would be, and so I tip my hat to Lewis (and to Hunt) for not abandoning realism for the sake of an easy plot out.

(Spoilers to come) The work Cheryl and Mark do obviously helps (why else would it have become a movie?), and slowly Cheryl finds herself drawn to Mark, though he remains either oblivious or, being a gentleman, doesn't comment on it.  As Mark becomes more confident and encounters his sexual hang-ups, and his life's hang-ups, we see him start to assert himself more, and find more value in his life.  We also see Cheryl, whose marriage has a hiccup but doesn't falter, after their fourth session, encourage Mark to stop seeing her, because she's done all the good she can do.  The breakdown Hunt experiences in the car afterwards was so raw, and not necessarily pre-ordained, and so I found myself crying along with her.  Again, a triumph from an actress who hasn't had a lot of opportunities since the Academy crowned her fifteen years ago.

The film, for me, should have ended there.  The subsequent scenes, with Mark almost dying, and then meeting the love of his life, and then finally dying, and leaving a confusing message at the end of the film about whether or not Cheryl or this new woman was the love of his life, added unnecessary and murky complexities to the film that sort of kill the earlier scenes and really the purpose of the sex surrogacy.  In this case, a little ambiguity would have made the film better-we had received closure, we didn't need the neatly tied bow.

But that is not to say that this isn't a film worth checking out-you should soon, and see it with someone, if only for the inevitably thought-provoking conversation on the drive away from the theater.  After all, who doesn't love yet another conversation about sex?