Concussion (2013)

A synopsis for this film about a 42 year old well-to-do New York housewife in a lesbian marriage who becomes an upmarket supplier of sexual services for women sounds like outright sexploitation material but it is actually a largely conventional, slightly transgressive relationship drama. The lesbianism is treated as entirely matter-of-fact and the limited depiction of Abby with her clients is quite restrained. If anything this is the film’s shortcoming – it’s too tastefully presentable.

Abby (Robin Weigert) and Kate (Julie Lawrence) are married and living in the suburbs of New York. Kate is an upscale divorce lawyer while Abby looks after their two kids, goes to the gym and does up apartments. When Abby gets hit in the head by their son’s baseball her libido is apparently unleashed. She tries a couple of women-only prostitutes and in no time, thanks to her business associate (Johnathan Tchaikovsky), she has set herself in her swish Manhattan loft apartment catering to women wanting sex with other women.

Writer-director Passon’s film it is too coffee tablebookishly tasteful for its own good. Abby and her circle are all well-to-do New Yorkers married to wealthy spouses, Abby is an interior decorator, in her early 40s but still attractive. Passon makes clear the dissatisfactions in her life but really makes nothing of her flirting with danger in order to escape them. We see Abby with a variety of clients but all, bar a token fat one, are similarly elegant well-to-do New Yorkers(Abby charges $800 as session so they need to be) . We see them briefly engaging in sex (not the fat one) but none, bar one, of them have any dynamic part to play in the story. At one point Abby gets involved with a woman (Maggie Siff) from her neighbourhood and it seems that this might be the start of some kind of fracturing of Abby’s fantasy, but nothing comes of it. Ditto for when Kate finally confronts Abby’s dishonesty. All up, no-one's boat is rocked by anything that happens. "When life is this comfortable why would you"? seems to be Passon's conclusion but it is one that lacks the resonance of a Sirk or Bunuel, two obvious reference points for anyone dealing with the stultifying nature of bourgeois existence. And why the ruse of concussion was needed is far from clear as it never features again in Abby’s emotional and psychological adventure. The film's final scene suggest that Lobotomy would have been as relevant a title.

Weigert is attractive and engaging in the lead but as much as Passon may have intentionally chosen to underplay her material, dramatically this over-aestheticized film is too composed and the characterisation too superficial for anyone to care much about her protagonist. And given the relatively unusual take on the subject of  long-term relationships, this is a real missed opportunity. 

FYI: For a much more impassioned take on lesbianism see Blue Is The Warmest Colour.

 

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