Concussion

42-year-old Abby is married, well-heeled and a lesbian. She and her wife have two children – they are the perfect family. Then one day she sustains a head injury from a baseball whilst playing with her children and, all at once, her neatly arranged balance of gym, school, family and housework goes awry: "I don't want this!" is her desperate mantra as she is taken to hospital. She embarks upon a renovation project in the nearby city and, before long, puts both her tidy suburban home and her preordained existence behind her. After twice having sex with prostitutes she too begins working – servicing women only, of course – for probably the most unlikely madam in cinema history. Welcome to new New Queer Cinema where the women are getting older and the topics more grown-up and less cluttered – or perhaps not? Stacie Passon’s first full-length feature is produced by Rose Troche, director of Go Fish, a lesbian classic of New Queer Cinema which won the 1994 Teddy Award. Theirs is a productive collaboration, as Passon’s reciprocal role as producer of Troche’s latest short demonstrates; it also bodes well for future joint projects.