The Sessions (2012)
Directed by Ben Lewin
Though a childhood bout with polio left him dependent on an iron lung, Mark O'Brien maintains a career as a journalist and poet. A writing assignment dealing with sex and the disabled piques Mark's curiosity, and he decides to investigate the possibility of experiencing sex himself. When his overtures toward a caregiver scare her away, he books an appointment with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene to lose his virginity.
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3 films that influenced The Sessions
What critics say influenced The Sessions
Geoffrey Simpson's ("Shine," "Under the Tuscan Sun") digital photography even evokes the filmmaking of the earlier decade.
To call Ben Lewin’s inspiring and Oscar-baiting “The Sessions’’ a cross between “My Left Foot’’ and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin’’ may be somewhat flip, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.
Though at its core the film is essentially about a disabled man trying to get laid for the first time, it’s a lot more than just some strange blending of “ The 40-Year-Old Virgin ” and “My Left Foot.”
As in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, this is a recipe for gentle comedy edged with melancholy, but the hero of The Sessions seemingly has greater cause for despair, since he spends most of his waking hours at home in an iron lung (the result of childhood polio).
The portrayal of a dominant/submissive relationship in Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002) provided one of the most intensely romantic onscreen couplings in the past decade while the everything-and-anything-goes approach to sex in Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006) resulted in one of cinema’s most affectionate and funny films about love and sex.