Nearly every minute the camera is focused on her, [Rebecca] Hall wears a vague, faraway look of uncertainty, as though she is contemplating the past, present, and future all at once.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 15, 2018

A small story made with big performances from leads Stevens and Hall, and while it hasn't gotten the promotional push for audiences to pay attention, people lucky enough to stumble across it will fall for everyone involved.

| Feb 9, 2018

(Director Brian Crano) gives Permission a tremulous tone that's in turns sexy, tender, and heart-trembling.

| Feb 9, 2018

What is most unexpected about Permission is its sense of poignancy and tenderness. In its own way, it's quite heartbreaking.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 9, 2018

You kind of want to slap everybody in Permission, and that's kind of the point.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Feb 9, 2018

While it deals with heavy relationship issues including the validity of monogamy, it manages an easy, seemingly effortless humor that seduces the audience while simultaneously breaking filmgoers' hearts.

| Feb 8, 2018

Stevens and Hall are always interesting to watch. (In fact, you should watch him in "The Guest" and her in "The Awakening," if you want to see two excellent, lesser-known films.)

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 8, 2018

Ms. Hall ... is the standout, selling Anna's indecision even through some of the script's dubious patches.

| Feb 8, 2018

[Hall and Stevens'] glowing performances are contained in a wan road-not-taken drama.

| Feb 8, 2018

An unconvincing treatment of familiar themes.

| Feb 6, 2018

Brian Crano is as skittish as his protagonists are about the particular contours of their dilemma. To put it bluntly, Permission is a sex film without the sex.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 6, 2018

Hall, in particular, lends a sober grace to the erotic roundelay.

| Feb 5, 2018

The pieces don't all quite fit together, but this is nonetheless a thoughtful and credible movie that handles grown-up issues in a grown-up manner.

| May 4, 2017