The Sessions- A Review

I’ve just seen The Sessions. I’m disabled and I write poetry, among other things, so let me just say first of all that I completely ‘got’ the character of Mark O’Brien- a disabled poet and writer.

How did Mark O’Brien become disabled? He got polio aged 6 and it left him in an iron lung.

The movie starts in 1988 in Berkeley, California. Mark O’Brien is asked by a newspaper to write a series on disability and sexuality. This starts him off thinking about his own life experiences- and  he starts wanting to experience a physical relationship himself. Think American Pie, add severe disability to the recipe and basically, readers, that’s The Sessions in a nutshell. Except The Sessions includes the very funny moment when Mark O’Brien’s priest tells him ‘I think God would give you a free pass on this one.’ I think that is going to become a classic movie quote!

In his life, Mark O’Brien met and romantically loved ‘three beautiful women, who all showed up at my funeral.’

The first of these was Amanda, one of his carers. Theirs was what I like to call ‘the classic disabled person’s love story.’ Severely disabled man meets carer. Man falls in love with carer. Carer cannot, or in this case, does not, do anything about it- usually because he is her client and it’s wrong. Every disabled man from Christy Brown to the lead character in Inside I’m Dancing has been there. In this case, Amanda leaves her job when Mark asks her to marry him. She later comes back into his life and tells him ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’   Haven’t we all heard that somewhere before?

So then Mark meets Cheryl. She’s a ‘sex surrogate’ who tries to teach him how to experience a physical relationship- while meeting all of his medical needs and throwing in some psychological counselling along the way. And, of course, Mark falls in love with Cheryl. The difference here is that Cheryl genuinely returns his feelings- but she stops the sessions when she realises this, because he is her client and it’s wrong.

His time with Cheryl gives Mark a new confidence and he later meets Susan. They enjoy a romantic relationship which lasts for the final five years of Mark’s life.

The only negative thing I would say was that the movie went into too much detail for its 15 rating.

Overall, though, I would highly recommend The Sessions to anyone with an interest in a story that will make you smile, laugh out loud, and cry, all at the same time.