How about this for a pitch? Three horny young guys sneak away from their parents to go on a road trip.Their destination?  A mythical heavenly bordello where they hope to all lose their virginities. The twist? Philip (Robrecht Vanden Thoren) is paralysed from the neck down, Jozef (Tom Audanaert) is almost entirely blind and Lars (Gilles De Schryver) is dying of an inoperable brain tumour and is confined to a wheelchair.  

It's a pretty compelling spin on the coming-of-age road movie template.Come as You Are (original title'Hasta La Vista')occupies similar territory to both The Sessions and Untouchable, both of which are relatively recent releases (at least in the UK).  These  films share multiple elements, almost enough to add up to a new subgenre: the bittersweet disabled sex comedy.  It’s already proved fertile ground, a way to allow directors and writers to expose the relatively unseen world of disability and to exploit the situation's potential as dramatic metaphor.

 

Though the three leads in Come as You Are are in their early twenties, at the opening of the film they're treated like children.  Depressingly, this process of infantilisation initially seems inescapable.  Philip, who is tetraplegic, relies on his parents to feed him, dress him, put him to bed and wash him.  Though all the character's parents are ever less than sympathetic, we quickly see that the attention they lavish on their children is beginning to suffocate them.  

All three friends sense that they're wearing straitjackets, and all ache for a taste of adult freedom.  Lars’ terminal illness lights a fire under them - time is running out - and how better to define themselves as adults than getting laid?