Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 14 November

The Sessions (Lewin, 2012)

Eleven years ago this week I reviewed Ben Lewin’s lovely film The Sessions for the Capital Times and I described it as “… the best film about ther­apy since Good Will Hunting and one of the best films about any­thing this year.”

Poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) was crippled with polio as a child and forced to spend more than 20 hours a day in an iron lung, prac­tising his craft with a pen­cil held between his teeth, rely­ing on care­givers for – almost – every import­ant bod­ily func­tion. Although he spent his life hori­zont­al he wasn’t para­lysed and he could still feel everything that was done to his body – a fact that a pretty nurse giv­ing him his daily wash could prob­ably testi­fy to… As a red-blooded American male in his 30s, his head could get turned by a shapely fig­ure even though his inex­per­i­ence and dis­ab­il­ity meant he was totally lack­ing in romantic confidence.

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To com­plic­ate mat­ters still fur­ther, his Catholic faith also provided him with the tra­di­tion­al guilt com­plex, although it did intro­duce him to a loc­al priest (William H. Macy) who could min­is­ter to his increas­ingly tor­tured soul. A coun­sel­lor intro­duces Mark to the idea of a sex sur­rog­ate – a ther­ap­ist spe­cial­ising in help­ing cli­ents get over sexu­al prob­lems and hangups. He wants to lose his vir­gin­ity before he dies but the church won’t sanc­tion sex out­side wed­lock. What’s a guy to do?

After a moment’s con­sid­er­a­tion, kindly Father Brendan pre­dicts that God would prob­ably give Mark a free pass in this case, not real­ising that this bless­ing means that he’s going to get a blow by blow (so to speak) account of the thera­peut­ic pro­cess. The phys­ic­al min­is­tra­tions are provided by Helen Hunt’s Cheryl, a registered sex ther­ap­ist and a soul so sens­it­ive to Mark’s situ­ation that frankly every man should be lucky enough to have such a coach.

Going back to check the details of this review, I dis­cov­er that writer/director Ben Lewin is him­self a polio sur­viv­or and requires crutches to get around. A true labour of love, then.

Also fea­tur­ing in that week’s review are Richard Gere in the Wall Street thrill­er Arbitrage, Australian 3D shark movie Bait, and the James Patterson adapt­a­tion Alex Cross about which I wrote:

On arrival at the always friendly Empire Cinema in Island Bay on Saturday for Alex Cross, when offered a free cup of cof­fee I replied “that’s worth an extra half star”. So, as a man of my word – not to men­tion someone who doesn’t nor­mally deal in star rat­ings – I am obliged to give Alex Cross half a star. But if you need a second opin­ion, I can report that as the clos­ing cred­its rolled my com­pan­ion leaned over and said “that was the worst. film. ever.”

Where to find The Sessions

Aotearoa, Australia and the UK: stream­ing on Disney+

USA: Digital rental

Further reading

Over at RNZ, I’ve just done a quick sur­vey of three minor David Fincher films to see if they allow us to think of him as an auteur (in the tra­di­tion­al sense): The Game, House of Cards (pilot) and Mank.