Entertainment

Ready, willing & disabled

William H. Macy collars the role of a funny priest who gives his blessing to a paralyzed man’s sex life.

To call Ben Lewin’s inspiring and Oscar-baiting “The Sessions’’ a cross between “My Left Foot’’ and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin’’ may be somewhat flip, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.

Mark O’Brien, the real-life poet-journalist played by John Hawkes in a tour de force, spends most of his day confined to an iron lung because of polio contracted when he was a child. He can use a stick in his mouth to dial a phone or turn the pages of a book.

At age 38, Mark’s determined to lose his virginity — and so he turns to Cheryl Cohen, a professional sex surrogate played with great warmth and humor by a sometimes very naked Helen Hunt.

The setting is Berkeley, Calif., in 1988. Though USC grad Mark can’t move anything from the neck down, he does feel sensation — particularly when a beautiful caregiver begins giving him baths.

His impulsive marriage proposal is politely rejected, and the young woman leaves. But more than Mark’s curiosity is aroused when he accepts an assignment to write an article about sex for the disabled (on which this film is based).

The very Catholic but witty Mark (“I believe in a God with a sense of humor’’) seeks the blessing of his surprised new parish priest (a very funny William H. Macy) to experience sex outside marriage because he’s “probably getting close to my due date.’’

“I know in my heart that God will give you a free pass on this one,’’ says the longhaired Father Brendan, who will later bring Mark a beer to celebrate.

So Mark’s compassionate but hip attendant Vera (Moon Bloodgood) wheels him on a gurney for his first appointment.

Surrogate Cheryl — also a very practical soccer mom — explains, before getting down to business, that there can be no more than six sessions: “Unlike a prostitute, I don’t want your return business.’’

The very sex-positive “The Sessions’’ treats intimacy with an explicitness and honesty that’s very rare in movies. It may be the first film that doesn’t turn premature ejaculation into a punch line.

The bigger problem in reaching Mark’s ambitious goal — full penetration — is his growing feelings for Cheryl, whose husband (Adam Arkin) is upset when he intercepts a love poem that Mark has sent his wife.

Writer-director Lewin — a 66-year-old veteran filmmaker who himself had polio as a child and walks using braces — treats Mark and his sexuality without condescension or schmaltz. His pitch-perfect script explores this unusual subject with great sensitivity and lots of character-driven humor.

Hunt’s nude scenes are explicit but tasteful — but Hawkes doesn’t get to show the full monty because of the movie rating board’s double standard, which demands that any film with an aroused male automatically gets slapped with a financially ruinous NC-17 rating.

In her first major screen role in several years, at age 49, Oscar winner Hunt (for “As Good as It Gets’’) aces a tricky role, putting across Cheryl’s kindness and self-deprecating humor.

Playing a character 15 years younger than his actual age of 53, Oscar nominee Hawkes (“Winter’s Bone’’) again demonstrates his versatility as a compelling screen presence and actor’s actor — he and Hunt are likely to be acknowledged when Oscar season rolls around.

Here Hawkes has to convey Mark’s complicated feelings entirely through his face and voice while lying down and replicating the character’s contorted posture.

I fell in love with “The Sessions’’ when it premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival under a better title, “The Surrogate.’’ If you give this unusual, charming and surprisingly entertaining movie a chance, I’m sure you will, too.