Concussion

This low-budget US indie melodrama walks on thin ice, but it does so with a spring in its step and a sharp rejoinder on its lips. Perennial supporting player Robin Weigert takes centre stage as Abby, the bored lesbian housewife and mother who decides to use the New York pad she’s been fixing up to start entertaining young, paying (but exclusively female) clients. Of course, it’s not long before her secret life starts playing havoc with her real one.

First-time writer-director Stacie Passon has a great eye, framing warm bodies and faces against cold, crisp interiors. Her script is all a bit poor-little-rich-me, and its suggestion that prostitution is a relatively risk-free route to self-discovery for suburban soccer moms is glib bordering on offensive. But Weigert is tough and terrific in the lead – the scenes in which she vets potential johns (or janes?) in a local coffee house maintain a crafty balance between tense, funny, bitter and sympathetic.