With Your Permission

For a while, With Your Permission accomplishes the seemingly impossible as it uses spousal abuse as fodder for a wry, low-key comedy. The story concerns a cruise-ship chef (Lars Brygmann’s Jan) who tends to arrive at work sporting a new injury on a daily basis, which he covers up by blaming his inherently clumsy nature. But after his boss eventually figures out what’s really going on, he orders Jan into a group therapy session for battered spouses; wackiness ensues after Jan inadvertently walks into the session for wife beaters. Director Paprika Steen, working from Anders Thomas Jensen’s screenplay, infuses the early part of With Your Permission with a subtle yet sporadically hilarious sensibility that proves impossible to resist, with Brygmann’s very effective central performance certainly playing a significant role in the movie’s early success. But the lack of propulsive force within the storyline, coupled with the increasingly noticeable dearth of laughs, ultimately ensures that the film eventually wears out its welcome, despite the inclusion of a few genuinely poignant elements within the third act.

** out of ****