Sexual Healing

Evelien (53), spastic from birth and with merely disappointing sexual experiences in her pocket, is taking the first steps on her quest for intimacy. During this personal journey, laced with humor, she discovers new parts of herself and her body, and she gradually opens up to the needs and desires she has been suppressing all her life. Evelien's burgeoning curiosity and fervor clash with a deep-rooted low self-esteem. Still, she confronts herself and considers a meeting with a sex carer. "Is it true that sex makes you more complete?", she wonders. Sexual Healing is a tough but lighthearted film about the necessity of intimate, human contact for every human being and how complex it can be to realize this if having sex is not evident. ---- Sincere, staunch and disarming, Sexual Healing reveals the underexposed aspect of intimacy among a large group of people that we usually disregard. But I want the film to say something about ourselves, too. How we relate to intimacy and what lies hidden underneath: our existential need for connection and its impact on our self-perception. So, the film essentially does not deal with sex care and even less about what it is like to have sex as a disabled person. It addresses the underlying feelings and vulnerability. In the pursuit of intimacy and security that takes center stage in this film and is embodied by Evelien, a whole palette of deeply human emotions surfaces: that what we crave or fear most. Our deep-rooted fear of rejection and irrelevance; our universal yearning for recognition; feelings of envy clashing with our desire to experience exclusive love; the profound insecurity we can feel about meeting someone heart to heart. This makes Evelien's quest, and the people she meets on it, one that we all share.