The Exchange

The production company behind The Exchange started out doing LGBTQ+ inclusive webseries, Flunk. Since then, they’ve released tie-in films as well as The Exchange, a stand alone movie with similar themes. So right off the bat, I admire this small, Australian company. In all their work, including The Exchange, there’s a specific focus on representation and exclusivity. Hell yeah! However, I think I’m not the right age to be the target audience for The Exchange. Like Flunk before it, The Exchange is about teenagers, and I think that’ll be the audience that appreciates it most.

At the opening of The Exchange, Sabina complains to her girlfriend, Esther about how she will be housing an exchange student from Mexico named Annie. When Annie arrives, Sabina gives her less than a warm welcome. Sabina has a pretty mean girl attitude towards Annie generally. And to be fair, Annie doesn’t exactly help her case. She frequently likes to portray herself as an opposite of Sabina, especially in front of Sabina’s dad. Luckily for Annie, she finds another girl to befriend. But whoops! It’s Esther, Sabina’s girlfriend. As you might imagine, this adds further tension to the scenario.

Because the writer and director started out doing web series, I was a little concerned about how that would translate to making a feature film. I’ve seen some pretty mixed results from that career trajectory before. My biggest concern was visuals. And I was pleasantly surprised. This is a very nice-looking movie. There’s clear attention to lighting and blocking. Especially in moments of establishing shots and montage, director Rob McLaughlin shows some real chops. When the focus of the film becomes primarily visual, especially if there’s a romantic tone to the scene, The Exchange works really well.

You can see the web series roots in aspects like pacing and especially editing, though. There’s little faith in the film’s dialogue scenes. This is where the editing becomes most obnoxious, with twice as many cuts and random angles as needed. My prediction is that coming from a web series, there’s more of a desire to make even a five minute scene stand on its own and be visually interesting. That might be a whole episode on a web series. But personally, I found it distracting. You can just have a nice shot reverse-shot dialogue scene with no bells and whistles. And also, every scene probably could’ve been a minute shorter.

One thing The Exchange is really successful at is somehow walking a line where the film both has moments of relatability, darkness and realism but also a keen sense of the romantic. The plot gets pretty heavy. And even early on, these girls’ lives are not perfect. They’re also all pretty shitty people. The film doesn’t shy away from that. Yet the moments of Annie and Esther together are staggeringly romantic. This is where those montages really sing. And even not in montages, many scenes with them have a sort of idealized version of flirtation. This mixture probably shouldn’t work. Hell, maybe it doesn’t. But when I imagine a teen watching this, it makes sense. Having a film devoid of conflict or depth likely wouldn’t appeal to an ansgsty teen, especially one who’s queer. But these moments of queerness offer joy, hope and something to aspire to.

The best word I can think to describe of The Exchange’s depiction of sapphic sexuality is indulgent. In the best possible way. For all its montages of young girls kissing and wearing bathing suits, it doesn’t feel sleazy or exploitative to me. It just feels like they’re excited to show girls kissing to an audience that wants to see girls kissing. The film feels welcoming to me as a queer woman. There’s such focus on clearly making this a movie for queer people. The passion and respect that emanates from this portray of young queer women is really nice to see.

Honestly, the best way to watch The Exchange is casually. For all its drama, there’s something comforting and familiar about it. It’s the perfect movie for when you don’t have the mental capacity for a European art film. You want to only give a movie 40% of your attention? The Exchange is a good candidate for that. I don’t mean to be shady in saying that. I think audiences often want something they only need to pay 40% attention to. But this isn’t exactly a modern masterpiece. It’s inclusive, familiar and charming. I applaud The Exchange for all that it is, but I can’t honestly write that the movie was amazing or particularly innovative. It’s just a high school romance. But for queer teens especially, “just a high school romance” is a huge market, and one that’s much less populated by titles for queer audiences than straight ones.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

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