Dan Stevens and Rebecca Hall in Permission (Good Deed Entertainment)

It’s hard to know where to begin with Permission. It has everything going for it: a solid cast; a soft, melodic soundtrack; a seemingly mature idea for a film that gives women agency over their sexuality. What occurs, however, is a string of run-of-the-mill clichés that masquerade as deep, human truths. It revels in the fact that it questions monogamy—as if non-monogamous relationships were just discovered. It’s detectable in the first scene, when Reece (Morgan Spector) abruptly suggests to his longtime friends Anna (Rebecca Hall) and Will (Dan Stevens) that they should sleep around. This leads to the unmarried couple to contemplate and then act on this idea.

The entire movie centers on conversation, accompanied by iconic shots of the Manhattan skyline and set in gentrified Brooklyn. Anna is getting a graduate degree in music history at NYU; Will and Reece are carpenters; and Reece’s partner, Hale (David Joseph Craig)—who is also Anna’s brother—owns a nursery. This is about as deep as the characters get. Their careers come to stand in for personalities or psychological depth.

Perhaps the biggest flaw is that they are boring. Worse—boring and annoying. They can only talk about themselves. On top of that, the dialogue falls short. Lines like “I want to be happy” are not expressed in any meaningful way. As an audience, we’re never shown emotions but merely told, and you’re never quite sure why Will and Anna have stayed together so long—he’s not even that nice to her.

Anna has clearly let her academic career (which is never actually explained) get in the way of her true passion for performing. Though Hall does the best she can, the script doesn’t really give us much on Anna. Why does she have no other friends? Why did she leave her music career? Why does she tolerate Will’s insecurities? The film clearly and, in fact, bluntly states that you can’t account for growth. Meaning, Will and Anna have stayed together just out of safety and happenstance. But still, couldn’t Anna be more of her own person?

Permission is also quite predictable: Will is instantly jealous and insecure after Anna sleeps with someone else. He doesn’t even seem to care after one of Anna’s flings treats her quite poorly and she needs emotional support. The script also could have delved into why he feels so insecure—a moment of reflection Will sorely lacks. But the movie takes the easy way out. Will and Anna fight, but never seemingly about how they feel but over their new partners and what rules they should follow.

The film could be lauded for showing the hard work of opening up a relationship to examination, but it does so through such shallow dialogue that the audience doesn’t get a sense of nuance nor hardship. Because the characters are just tropes, their psychological turmoil is all surface and no depth.