"Excision": Dark Coming-Of-Age Drama

Excision (2012)

The first thing I need to explain about Excision before anything else is the revelation that Traci Lords is (these days at least) an awesome actress. She plays a mother troubled by the future of both her daughters in this dark coming-of-age drama about a disturbed girl.



If you don't know who Traci Lords is, here's the background. Traci Lords began her career in porn. For those of you are into that sort of thing, you are probably not going to get very far with this one. It turns out that she lied about her age and was actually 16 when she got started (though according to wikipedia she claimed that she was 20). As such, all the work she did in porn is now illegal. The authorities got involved around three weeks after her 18th birthday, so there really is absolutely no legal porn from this actress.

The scandal when her age was revealed made her quite a celebrity, so she used this to move into acting. Her 'first mainstream role' was in one of the ultra-low budget flicks produced by Roger Corman: "Not Of This Earth" (1988 version). However, since then she's been nothing if not prolific. However, while she may have been in plenty of films and tv series, I've never really known her to have quite such a major role as she does here in "Excision" before.



Anyway, it turns out she's more than capable of handling a major role. This is far more than just a celebrity cameo. Traci Lords is absolutely perfect in the role here and does a fantastic job.

The main actress in "Excision" however, is playing the role of one of her two daughters. AnnaLynne McCord's previous credits include a major role in the tv series "90210" (I've never really heard of it) and a role as the tall scantily clad badass woman with very few lines in "Transporter 2". She's normally playing quite glamorous figures, so you'd barely recognise her the way she looks in "Excision". Her hair is a mess and her skin has been made up to give her that "difficult stage of puberty" look. She also often looks rather pale and on top of all this her demeanour during the movie significantly serves to lower her sex appeal.



AnnaLynne McCord doesn't look unattractive in "Excision", but there's no trouble imagining her as an unpopular girl in school who might not have boys flocking to ask her out. (Super obvious hint to other filmmakers wishing to emulate this movie's good choices. If you want your female protagonist to seem like she'd be unpopular in school: Don't give her perfect glamour make-up! Duh!)

( Rest of the review under the cut... )