The Sessions, a Review: Optometrist Recommended, FDR Approved.

Most of my optometrists have been somber folk, wizened over time, I assume, by traumatic exposure to eye goop, cornea tears, and severe tear duct malfunctions. Dr. Wax was different.

After arriving late to my original appointment, I was given to Dr. Wax. Dr. Wax was a different sort, of man and of optometrist. His voice was full of wonder, he "waxed" on about pop findings that affected him, like a recent History channel special about how state borders are decreed.

He asked, "I mean, do you have any idea how state borders are decided??"

I wanted to engage with Dr. Wax, with his overflowing earnestness, "By natural geological formations?"

"Wow. You have no idea how these borders are formed. Just fascinating! You have to watch this show!"

Then the conversation turned; it became more personal.

"So, what are you doing with your life? Do you work? Do you study? Do you study and wish you worked?" He asked, while shining a thin beam of light over the curvature of my lens. The questions and the light penetrated beyond the retinal ganglion.

"I'm studying for my GREs. For, uh, psychology. Yes, for psychology. I want to do clinical work."

"Ahhhh!" A chord in Dr. Wax's harp-strung soul was struck. "Psychology is a most magnificent field! Have you seen The Sessions?"

I hadn't.

"Oh, you really must see it! I just read an article about the woman they interviewed for the movie-- a sex.. surrogate-- who they based Helen Hunt's character on. You know, to figure out how the character really ticks."

Anyways, a long conversation about The Sessions, sex surrogates, and various strings of letters in different sizes ensued. I wanted a piece of his wonder because I'm tired of my own tired wonder. So I dragged my jaded-on-recent-movies ass to the theatre, alone on a Friday night, RE The Lovelessness of my previous entry, and watched The Sessions with no context (no trailer, plot summary, review, etc.), save the awe of Dr. Wax.

The good news is that my eyes improved, from -2.50 to -2.25! Oh, and The Sessions was a brilliant film.

***

Well, while I can imagine some of my friends criticizing the movie for its many uber dramatic plot developments-- it is a movie about a Devout Catholic cripple trying to lose his virginity to a sex surrogate/therapist (Helen Hunt), after all. Yet, I felt I wasn't crying enough for the first half of the movie, given the melodramatic premise. And that I was laughing far too much. Yes, laughing aloud and alone with free abandon!

But, oh mama, the tears eventually did come, and, so I left overwhelmingly satisfied (agenda fulfilled**). Logically, the waterworks started later in the movie, when the characters had been developed and I had grown fond of their company. The Sessions really is a movie of excellent development, artful crescendo, and masterful acting.

The flick opens with an odd scene, where the protagonist, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes) graduates from Berkeley in (I think) the late 70's. The only thing is, O'Brien is confined to a gurney, and glides across the graduation stage with ghostlike expediency, draped in a black gown. His cap is hanging off the post of his reclining motorized hospital bed. It is like the worst David Foster Wallace nightmare coming true, and I grimaced imagining impending sexual scenes that would involve this pancake of a man.

Boy did I misjudge the sexy-potential of an iron-lung lifer, albeit played by a Hollywood actor! When we get to know O'Brien, a poet and journalist by trade, he is charming and shameless in just that way that people who have lived lives like A Series of Unfortunate Events seem to often adopt. The Sessions deserves a watch just for the jarring realism of O'Brien's performance, who kind of reminded me of a Catholic Woody Allen. Of course, I must also tip my hat to Ben Lewin (writer/director), who was able to capture the voice of the real Mark O'Brien (whose life the movie is based on) and his written words, without creating an insufferable pretentious atmosphere that is so common in movies created under the guise of an author's work.  

And, of course, O'Brien's mild kinkiness also helped endear the movie to me ;) Although, for being a movie framed entirely by The Catholic Church, represented rather one-dimensionally by Father Brendan (William H. Macy), there is little to do about Jesus-related sex hang ups.

Cheryl, the sex surrogate/therapist at one point makes an audio note that O'Brien has masochistic fantasies, probably related to his strong faith, and guilt stemming from the negative effect of his disabled condition on others. Fair. But this brief audio note is really all we hear or see pertaining to these masochistic fantasies. O'Brien's enthusiasm and insistence that Cheryl achieve orgasm during their therapy sessions seems to stem from his sensitivity rather than suppressed submissive side.

At one point, O'Brien describes part of a session with Cheryl to Father Brendan, his main confidante, loosely along these lines, "She either forgot to close the door or didn't care to. The sound of urine and ripping of toilet paper was so arousing. It was so intimate. By the time she came back to bed, my penis was so hard." However, it is clear that O'Brien isn't lusting after a golden shower, he just really can and does appreciate the closeness of cohabitation that most people, people who have seen many women come and go from their lavatories, take for granted.

So, where's the kink? you ask. Well, besides the fact that one of the last scenes does feature O'Brien offhandedly relating his slightly off-center sexual relations with his latest and last love and lover, Susan (Robin Weigert) to Father Brendan, "Oh yeah, she adores me. Let's me do anything I want, and I can get kinda kinky", the real kink is the sexualization of O'Brien himself.

O'Brien/Hawkes' body is startlingly erotic. All of the women in the movie (except maybe his first love interest, Amanda) seem genuinely emotionally and sexually attracted to him. It would be easy to attribute this to the fact that John Hawkes is just a studly, limbful guy playing a gimp, but I don't think that's it. In fact, I don't even really think Hakwes is all that objectively hawt. There is something about the fearless sexuality of O'Brien's character, his fixation on women and love, despite (Note to self: reviewing The Sessions requires a lot of italics) his physical lot, that kind of turned me on.

Supine on a gurney, sucking air periodically from a portable tank, hands contorted, and sporting a paisley button-down, it is hard to initially consider O'Brien a sex object. And yet, throughout the movie, he becomes one. By the end of the film, when he's hitting on Susan, a volunteer at a hospital he is taken to after a near-death experience, he's almost a ladies man. She asks him if he wants her to come visit him, to which he snarkily replies, "Do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a husband? Do you have a significant other whom you are devoted to?" When she answers in the negative to all, he completes his suave play, "Then please come visit me as much as you can."

I don't think the positive sexualization of handicapped people was intentional (or maybe it was?), but it certainly made me question my own sexual attitude toward the disabled. Before last night, my only interaction with the idea of crippled sex was making fun of paraplegic porn. In fact, right before the movie I was texting with a friend about the existence of dating sites for gimps. Looking at the way Cheryl looked at O'Brien-- and I know it's just a movie-- made me wonder if I could get off on someone who couldn't get up (but could get it up :) ) I found myself uncontrollably intrigued by the deep curve of O'Brien/Hawkes' rip cage...

Anyway, this is leading into my final point. The true triumph of The Sessions, in my opinion, is that it allows a handicapped protagonist to live with love as his primary motivation, rather than running a marathon or saving the world. Many marginalized groups have had their sexual/romantic rights vindicated in films, but I have yet to see a good portrayal of such for the severely disabled.

It has always seemed to me that there is an expectation of the disabled, particularly physically disabled/mentally sound, like O'Brien, to operate entirely altruistically. In The Sessions, it is all about O'Brien (even though he is sexually attuned to his lovers' needs). He is a bit self-centered, needy, demanding-- all of his conversations with Father Brendan are about him and his sexual quest-- and I think that's pretty cool.

FDR would be proud.


**(((I should add that, in addition to fulfilling the will of Dr. Wax, I had my own agenda. Unlike many movie-goers who trot on to the theaters to laugh off the gray dust they accumulated on their shoulders and souls during the week, I go to the movies to cry. Seriously, to shed tears, not just "feel emotional".


My working theory is that because I graduated with honors from The School of Hard Knocks, I've learned to take things in stride; I very rarely lose control of my emotions in the midst of a real-life situations. Cinema is my locus for catharsis, where I let all my stifled "FUCKKKKS!!" seep out, liquified and compartmentalized in the womb of the theatre. But only when I'm alone. In company, my back stays straight and the "FUCKKKKS!!" remained broiled in my gut.

With my menstrual cycle in full swing and my mind consumed by worry over applications and job interviews, my agenda was bolded. In fact, I pretearjaculated during a terrible-looking preview for a movie from the makers of The Pursuit of Happyness. So, the fact that The Sessions is so emotional and heart felt works in its favor for the likes of me, while it might turn off mushier, diasffected folk. Okokokikowtimeforthereview)))