Berkley, California, 1 9 8 8. Mark O'Brien (38) contracted polio as a child and was left paralyzed from the neck down due to its complications, and now can only survive four hours without negative pressure ventilator. However, he is determined that this should not prevent him from finally losing virginity. He assigns his caregiver Vera to contact therapist Cheryl Cohen-Greene who works as a sexual surrogate. Cheryl tells him she will only do six sessions, and he accepts. Cheryl takes Mark's clothes off and lies next to him on the bed, but he ejaculates immediately. Little by little, Cheryl helps him endure longer, teaching him cunnilingus, and finally having sex with him. Mark falls in love with her and writes a poem for her, but his letter is thrown away by Cheryl's jealous husband. Cheryl and Mark agree to not to do the final two sessions and end the encounter. In the hospital, Mark meets a woman, Susan, who becomes his wife. He dies at the age of 49.
Based on the true story of Mark O'Brien's encounter with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene, "The Sessions" is a sad, depressive and tragic meditation on sex with disability, meaning that it might be too much to handle for some viewers due to such a taboo topic, but its humor, optimism and humanity luckily prevent it from falling into melodrama. Its topic reminds of the similar movie "Nationale 7", where people in a wheelchair want to pay a prostitute to lose virginity, except that Mark here is in even worse state, since he can't even move his hands and has to lie horizontally in a stretcher almost the entire movie. In the opening act, a cat walks by him, lying on a negative pressure ventilator, and since there is nobody around who can scratch his itch on the nose, he goes: "Scratch with your mind". When he asks his caregiver his opinion about sex, the man describes it as: "Overrated, but necessary". Mark is intelligent, witty and sharp, and the fact that he refuses to see himself as a victim and simply tries to live as normal as possible is laudatory. The highlight is the character of Cheryl, who is such an excellent personality that she lifts the film up a notch, and Helen Hunt is miraculous playing here. Her entrance is already genius: a phone rings in a house, a teenager picks it up and says: "Cheryl! Phone for you!" Cue to Cheryl entering the house and saying to the teenager before picking up the phone: "I'm not your girlfriend. When someone calls, particularly someone you don't know, you can use the word 'Mum'." Cheryl's sessions with Mark, where they both lie naked and she lifts his hands to touch her body, are remarkably honest and unusual for American cinema, yet the director Ben Lewine always keeps this story sincere, genuine and has understanding for his characters. Cheryl works almost as some sort of a saint who is there to help a person in trouble solve a problem, in this case having sex with the disabled Mark, and her philanthropy and dialogues give the movie a sense of an aura. The finale is a bit underwhelming, though: sadly, Mark decides to end the ecounter two sessions early, while his meeting with Susan in the last five minutes could have been a whole story for itself.
Grade:++
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