Month: October 2012

A valentine to human potential and an at times staggering testimony to the more tender side of sex, The Sessions breaks ground while breaking your heart.

Starring John Hawkes as a 30-something victim of polio who spends much of his time in an iron lung, this audacious and surprisingly funny film asks us to contemplate Mark O’Brien’s mirthful mission to lose his virginity despite hardly being able to move. Able to lie only on his back in short stretches, Mark explains he has sensations below the waist but his motor skills are completely out of whack. He enlists a compassionate yet professional Sex Surrogate (Helen Hunt in a brave and perfect performance). One of her first spiels to Mark distinguishes the important difference between a surrogate and a prostitute. She’s there to genuinely help him and there will only be six sessions after which, sayonara. The viewer will also observe that like a prostitute, a surrogate will also keep emotional distance. At least of the attachment variety. However, eliciting healthy emotions are very much in play in a surrogate’s harmoniously varied methods, and Mark becomes a richer creature of feeling for his efforts at physical gratification. But not before experiencing some highly touching and often wildly amusing detours along the way.

Hawkes, very good as the meth dealer in Winter’s Bone, and outstanding as the cult leader in Martha Marcy May Marlene, doesn’t even look like himself here. His performance is nothing short of astonishing. Anyone familiar with the disabled will not just appreciate his craft at getting the details just right but will marvel at the amount of wit and verve he throws into his character. It’s practically a cliche these days that anyone playing a downtrodden or especially diseased character gets bonus points at awards time yet I can’t imagine Hawkes being ignored when Oscar nominations roll around. Nor Hunt, who is far more often naked in this film than not, both physically and emotionally. The 49-year-old actress obviously believed in this role enough to take a big risk and it pays off handsomely.

As a society we too often shun the disabled and tap dance around our conversations with them. The Sessions makes us comfortable around Mark and, thus, we begin to care about him. A lot. Based on a true story, the film also explores Mark’s encounters with various healthcare aides and with a savvy priest, who would ordinarily feel like an annoyingly tacked-on character, but is quite plausible here in no small part due to William H. Macy’s playing the priest. Mark regularly consults Macy as he embarks on his unique therapy since he considers himself a good Catholic and wants to know if the sex sessions violate any sex-out-of-wedlock church creeds. Mark earned a degree from The University of California while transporting himself to class on a gurney. The poetry Mark writes is played up in the film and makes us want more. Director/screenwriter Ben Lewin based The Sessions on “On Seeing A Sex Surrogate,” a 1990 Sun magazine article that O’Brien wrote. I know I won’t be the only one searching out “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien,” a 1996 Academy Award winning documentary.

The Session allows us to get inside Mark’s every insecurity, every desire (however brazen they might seem at first), and, ultimately, every disappointment. It’s a bittersweet life affirmation that wisely keeps in mind the very limitations we are all under, physically fit or otherwise, and the often uncanny methods we apply to overcome them.

4.5 Sex Surrogates Behaving Meaningfully (out of 5)

You can look at Ben Affleck’s Argo in two ways. In taking an actual incident involving the CIA and the 1979 hostage crisis and finessing it into a compelling and suspenseful potboiler, it entertains while informing. On the other hand, Affleck can veer into the type of truth embellishments deemed necessary to keep the proceedings from sinking to a documentary-like dramatic straitjacket. This risks devolving into a different problem when we’re treated with an airport car chase, for instance, that not only didn’t take place in the real life incident, but, above all, doesn’t make much sense as depicted here. Yet in Affleck’s third film as director (Gone Baby Gone, The Town) he displays the savvy skill of a far more veteran filmmaker.

Argo opens with a chilling portrayal of the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran by angry throngs of Iranians after it gives a quick backstory of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected regime (an overthrow aided by the United States) and his replacement with the reviled Shah. The embassy scene eerily conjures up modern day current events in Libya. Affleck filmed in Istanbul, impressively using thousands of walk-ons, who were taught Farsi slogans.

Big Ben first appears back in Washington at a CIA meeting to discuss methods to extricate six diplomats who managed to escape the embassy before being captured and then took refuge for several months at the home of the Canadian ambassador. He shoots down a rather absurd idea to have them pose as agriculture experts and ride bikes hundreds of miles to the border, then comes up with an ostensibly even sillier idea: Let’s go in, pretend to be a movie crew scouting locations, then get everybody out on a commercial flight with fake identities. The idea starts to catch on after enlisting the makeup man for Planet of the Apes, John Chambers (a hilarious John Goodman) to make it look like a real movie idea. By the time we get Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin as a crusty Hollywood producer) involved, the idea gets ready to climb the final rung of the ladder up to the Secretary of State (Philip Bakery Hall, dripping with his usual gravitas) and we’re on our way back to Iran. Apparently the fake movie company, which in the film plants fake stories and ads in Variety and stages a surreal read-through of the script by costumed actors, looked real enough it even received a screenplay from Steven Spielberg.

Affleck plays CIA agent Tony Mendez (upon whose memoir the screenplay is based) in about as anti-James Bond a manner as can be. Yet it’s not exactly Everyman Agent here as Affleck replaces Suave Agent with Brash Agent. It’s his way or the highway, he tells reluctant members of the group of six. Perhaps he needs to get this over as soon as possible so he won’t have to look at their bad 70’s haircuts any longer than necessary. In any case, before long we’ve got Ben rebelling against CIA bosses as well, defiantly meaning to bring this mission to a speedy conclusion.

Sporadic criticisms have Argo portraying rebelling Iranians in too harsh and cliched a manner. Yet just how do you portray a militant citizenry and a tyrannical Revolutionary Guard if you don’t show a little militancy and tyranny? Looming over events is the offstage story of the 52 men and women who were held hostage for 444 days. Affleck keeps things apolitical as far as policy yet throws in a little American flag and Jimmy Carter at film’s end for good measure.

Argo should be praised for the no easy feat of getting the look and feel of what it’s like to be embroiled in a gut-wrenching crisis in an overzealous and hostile foreign land. Affleck’s Mendez shows not one ounce of fear; Arkin and Goodman couch an underlying seriousness about the mission in an onslaught of witticisms that free-floatingly relieve the tension of the rest of the film. If the off-kilter hostages depicted here and the fluffy airport chase scene don’t seem to mesh as well with Argo’s driving force, the film quite capably overcomes them. In the pantheon of topical spy flicks, it finally yokes itself to an inner rhythm that confers its own cinematic authenticity….Now about those haircuts–

4 Silly Looking Hostages getting A Quickstudy As Filmmakers (out of 5)