Concussion

Concussion is a perfectly competent movie. According to the critical consensus, you might even call it good. However, for me, the most memorable thing about Concussion is how unmemorable it was. Not every WLW movie has to be life changing. But Concussion left so little impact on me as a viewer that I might as well have not seen it at all.

Concussion follows Abby, who lives a stable but boring suburban life with her wife, Kate and their son. After experiencing a mild concussion, Abby does what all of us would do and begins work as a prostitute named Eleanor. The film then focuses on Abby’s home life with which she continues to feel disconnected from as well as the interactions and connections she has with her clients.

As I mentioned, everything in Concussion is wholly competent. The directing is fine, the script has a beginning, middle and end as well as themes and stuff. The acting is very good too. It’s a very dialogue-heavy movie and the actors do well will their lines. On these technical levels, it’s all perfectly fine.

Part of my problem with Concussion is that I don’t connect with the lead character. Abby remains chilly and unrelatable to me even as she manages to make all the dialogue from the script seem natural coming out of her mouth. For a start, the whole premise of the movie is so crazy. Suffer a concussion, become a prostitute. I can’t say I relate. And the empathy I do develop seeing Abby’s life onscreen is limited. At the end of the film she still feels like a stranger to me.

I have seen Concussion be brought up as an example of how the new queer cinema has evolved into the new millennium. I take issue with this. The new queer cinema movement was generally fully of films that were a lot more stylistic than Concussion. The reason it was brought up by Rose Trioche and Travis Matthews is because of how it normalized sexuality. In 2013, these films where the homosexual aspect was present but not the focus and just sort of matter of fact were still rare. And that is absolutely a good thing about Concussion. But if this is the only thing that makes the film notable. The film as a whole isn’t notable enough to be an all-time LGBTQ movie classic. And besides, quite delightfully, films with a matter-of-fact take on sexuality have become more common in this decade. Maybe Concussion will be remembered as an early film to feature this take on sexuality. But more likely, I think the span of five years between 2013 and 2018 will be remembered as a time when several movies such as this were made and Concussion will not emerge as a standout.

Concussion is fine. It’s wholly competent and does having a pleasingly matter of fact view towards sexuality. However, I can’t think of one single person or group of people I would recommend this movie to specifically. Maybe if you’re big fans of Robin Weigert, I guess. The fact of the matter is, regardless of how many WLW movies you’ve seen, Concussion is always going to be somewhat middle of the pack. It probably won’t be the worst but it definitely won’t be the best. It’ll be that one you forgot you saw until someone brings it up and you go, “oh yeah. I saw Concussion. It was fine.”

Overall rating: 5.7/10

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