Heard good things about this movie and it seemed to appeal to viewers on different film festivals around the world, so decided to give it a shot as it's playing now in the Finnish theaters. Mark O'Brien is a poet
paralyzed by childhood polio and now trapped to a iron lung. One day
he decides that he wants to have sex and lose his virginity, but it's
not an easy task as he can't use his body from the neck down. His
therapist suggests him to try out a professional sex surrogate. With
the blessing of his priest he then hires the surrogate and takes a
different kind of journey into manhood. This is a character driven
drama and luckily the cast is quite great. John Hawkes, who seems to
have been in just about every second movie last year, does a great
job in the role of the poet, extremely hard role to play and he pulls
it off with style. Helen Hunt grabbed an Oscar nomination from her
role and rightfully so as it's the best she has given since As Goodas It Gets (1997). William H. Macy is always great and does not let down on this one
either. But the most surprising part was that even the smaller roles
were played near perfection, I can't think of a single complaint on
the acting on this movie. As the story is also quite interesting and
definitely touching there's all the pieces for a great movie. But
there's a bit of a problem with this movie, at least I couldn't
really get into the movie and the characters. I constantly felt like
an outside observer. Can't really put my finger on what the problem
was, maybe it were the characters who were not that easy to relate
to, a paralyzed poet, a sex surrogate and a priest. The story in
itself is of course easy to relate to, but the characters still felt
quite distant to me and in these kind of character driven movies it's
very important as otherwise the drama is kind of missed. So in the
end it wasn't as powerful movie as it could have been, however it was
well worth the watch and the great cast made this one a good movie.
70%
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