I finally got around to watching this movie about disability, sex, and love over the weekend. It recounts the true experience of Mark O’Brien, a Berkeley writer and poet with polio who yearns to experience sex and decides to hire a professional sex surrogate (Helen Hunt). John Hawkes is magnificent as the deeply insecure yet charming O’Brien. Of course, I would have preferred that an actor with a disability play the lead, but Hawkes plays the role with assurance. And Hunt really deserves to star in more films; few actors have the talent to handle a part that requires both intimacy and guardedness.
The movie itself is a bit disjointed. Scenes transition abruptly and the script sometimes relies too heavily on flashbacks. But several moments in the movie will have viewers with disabilities (or me, at least) nodding in recognition: the  bumbling confession of love to a caregiver, the painful realization that those feelings aren’t reciprocated, the persistent doubts that the loneliness will ever end. My own romantic and sexual misadventures differ in some respects from O’Brien’s, but I caught myself wincing and smiling a few times as the movie summoned memories of my own awkward efforts to find love, or at least a willing partner.
