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The Sessions
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.
2012 · Directed by Ben Lewin · 95 min · Drama · Romance · Comedy · Screenplay in the scene database · 4 frames
Tagline
The festival hit of the year!
Plot
In Berkeley, California, in 1988, Mark O'Brien is a 38-year-old poet who is forced to live in an iron lung due to complications from polio. Due to his condition, he has never had sex. After unsuccessfully proposing to his caretaker Amanda, and sensing he may be near death, he decides he wants to lose his virginity. After consulting his priest, Father Brendan, he gets in touch with Cheryl Cohen-Greene, a professional sex surrogate. She tells him they will have no more than six sessions together. They begin their sessions, but soon it is clear that they are developing romantic feelings for each other. Cheryl's husband, who loves her deeply, fights to suppress his jealousy, at first withholding a love poem that Mark has sent by mail to Cheryl, which she eventually finds. After several attempts, Mark and Cheryl are able to have mutually satisfying sex, but decide to cut the sessions short on account of their burgeoning feelings.
One day sometime later, the power goes out in the building in which Mark lives, causing the iron lung to stop functioning and making it necessary for Mark to be rushed to the hospital. However, he survives and meets a young woman named Susan Fernbach. The film then cuts to Mark's funeral, held sometime later in 1999, and attended by four of the women he came to know and care for, including Cheryl. Father Brendan gives the homily and Susan reads the poem he had previously sent Cheryl.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Written by: Ben Lewin
- Cinematography: Geoffrey Simpson
- Edited by: Lisa Bromwell
- Music: Marco Beltrami
- Production design: John Mott
- Produced by: Judi Levine, Ben Lewin, Stephen Nemeth
Cast
- John Hawkes as Mark
- Helen Hunt as Cheryl
- William H. Macy as Father Brendan
- Moon Bloodgood as Vera
- Annika Marks as Amanda
- Adam Arkin as Josh
- Rhea Perlman as Mikvah Lady
- W. Earl Brown as Rod
- Robin Weigert as Susan
- Blake Lindsley as Dr. Laura White
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Such Much Films, Rhino Films
- Budget: $1,000,000
- Box office: $9,138,338
- Themes: virgin, cat, narration, wheelchair, affectation, graduation, based on true story, sexual arousal, judaism, power outage
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