Permission
Director: Brian Crano
Starring: Rebecca Hall and Dan Stevens
Anna and Will are the kind of generic gentrifiers from Everywhere America who arrive in Brooklyn to compose the unwritten history of classical music and handcraft wood furniture that honors its elegant grain. They’re also throwbacks: mate-for-life romantics who enter their thirties as each other’s one and only sexual partner. A dinner conversation with an equally committed gay couple, Anna’s brother (David Joseph Craig) and Will’s business partner (Morgan Spector), seeds their minds with what-ifs, and begins the splintering of solid relationships.
This earnest, deadly serious character study has few moments of levity, mostly provided by an arch Gina Gershon, still as intoxicating and seductive as she was in Bound. Crano (A Bag of Hammers) creates a gorgeous environment for beautiful people, and his fondness for overhead shots isn’t the traditional God’s-eye view, but a way to create stylish compositions out of splayed vulnerability. His characters commit the sin of complacency, and he dishes out commensurate punishment.
