The Sessions

The Observer“Hunt plays her with a common-sense kindness, intelligence, empathy...” This funny, moving, beautifully acted movie avoids numerous pitfalls. It's neither clinical nor triumphalist. It's honest about desire and love and the need for sex, though perhaps somewhat judgmental about prostitutes...

The Independent“What might have been corny or exploitative turns out instead to be tender..” Resist your scepticism, because Ben Lewin's film is a miniature of comic sweetness and sorrow. Mark O'Brien, a Berkeley poet and essayist, had lived with polio since childhood, confined for most of the time to an iron lung...

The Telegraph“Mark O'Brien is really beautiful in it...” It’s a deeply humane and very accessible piece in which the actors engage us fully. After this and Hope Springs, there’s a new frankness in Hollywood’s depiction of sex problems...

Time Out film“A spry, funny and frequently forthright film...” Hawkes, a wonderful character actor finally enjoying the lead spotlight, warmly embodies O’Brien’s mix of naiveté and gallows humour, but it’s Hunt, richly deserving of her Oscar nomination, who impresses most...

Empire“Formulaic but uplifting, positive and accessible...” Sensitively done and undeniably moving, is a tad pat in an ‘inspirational, feelgood’ TV movie-but-with-nudity way. One cannot help but think, also, of other disabled-but-indomitable films such as The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, The Sea Inside.

Guardian“An unexpected crowd-pleaser...” It's classic awards bait: a polio victim, virtually paralysed and confined most of the day to an iron lung, resolves to lose his virginity to a sex surrogate...

Total Film “The most feelgood movie you’ll ever see about a man in an iron lung...” Aided by committed, awards-ready performance, The Sessions transforms ‘taboo’ subject matter into a humorous, humane and uncomplicated pleasure...

Evening Standard“ale of strange love puts late-flowering star in frame for an Oscar...” The Sessions only feels flimsy — even a tad smug — when we witness things the main character isn’t privy too, ie the private lives of the various women he adores. As for the ending, it’s cheesier than a Wotsit. Yet this is a must-see movie...