People Next Door 2022 / The Sessions / USA 2012
Poet Mark O’Brian (John Hawkes) contracted polio as a child and became paralysed as a result. He has troubles breathing and has to spend most of his time in a ventilator known as an iron lung. Now aged thirty-eight, he realises he doesn’t want to end up a virgin, and so a sex therapist (the excellent Helen Hunt) enters his life. Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance (2012), the film is an unusual yet immensely romantic comedy, in which sex takes a back seat.
Poet Mark O’Brian (John Hawkes) contracted polio as a child and became paralysed as a result. He has troubles breathing and has to spend most of his time in a ventilator known as an iron lung. After falling unhappily in love with his nurse, he realises he doesn’t want to spend his life (however long or short) as a virgin. He gets a recommendation for a sex therapist (the excellent Helen Hunt) who, over the space of six sessions, shows him how to accept his body and teaches him to give himself and his partner pleasure, regardless of his disability. Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance (2012), the film is an unusual yet immensely romantic comedy, in which sex takes a back seat. The focus is on the desire to love and be loved.
Anna Kořínek
95 min / Color, DCP
Director Ben Lewin
/ Screenplay Ben Lewin
/ Dir. of Photography Geoffrey Simpson
/ Music Marco Beltrami
/ Editor Lisa Bromwell
/ Producer Judi Levine, Ben Lewin, Stephen Nemeth
/ Production Such Much Films
/ Coproduction Rhino Films
/ Cast John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H. Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Annika Marks, Adam Arkin
/ Sales Park Circus Group
Ben Lewin (1946, Poland). Selected filmography: The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish (1991), Lucky Break (1994), The Sessions (2012), Please Stand By (2017), Purple Hearts (2022).
Park Circus Group
15 Woodside Crescent, G37UL, Glasgow
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 332 2175
E-mail: [email protected]
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