Review: The Sessions (15)

A poet and journalist, Mark is also confined for 20 hours a day to an iron lung. It’s an existence based on care and support. Which is precisely what he needs when it comes to his new, ultimate ambition.

Based on O’Brien’s own real-life account of his experiences with sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene (played by Helen Hunt) The Sessions is tender and touching without ever sliding into sentiment or mawkishness.

It is also refreshingly frank in its approach to one of the great unspoken taboos.

Yet the film is layered with such motifs, such as the casting of William H Macy as the sympathetic Catholic priest who assuages Mark’s issues of guilt and conflict.

The overriding feeling is one of fear. Mark, played with wit, charm, humour and a sense of cloying childhood responsibility by Hawkes, is a valuable human being prevented from achieving his goal. That goal, quite simply, is to be a regular guy.

Hawkes enjoys perfect on-screen chemistry with his various female co-stars but it is with the friendly, open and warm-spirited Hunt that the picture succeeds or fails.

Theirs is the crux of the story and if there were even the most miniscule suspicion that her sensitivity, or his anxiety, was faked then this story would implode. It never does.

Less convincing is the presence of the priest who acts as confessor and advocate. But he recognises in this man a sense of being cheated and is willing to bend his own beliefs to offer a solution.

The big question for this reviewer is why neither Hawkes nor Hunt was acknowledged with an Oscar nomination for best actor or actress.

Hawkes appeared to be a shoo-in after picking up nods from the Golden Globes, Screen Actors’ Guild and Critic’s Choice.

Hunt, however, was recognised in the category of best supporting actress.