Will (Dan Stevens) and Anna (Rebecca Hall) are a seemingly happy couple on the brink of marriage when a drunken comment makes them question the wisdom of pledging monogamy-ever-after to the only person they've ever had sex with. Determined to see what they've been missing, the two embark on parallel yet steadily diverging experiments in dating other people in Permission. Old friends themselves, Hall and Stevens made the film with Hall's husband, Morgan Spector, and another good friend, writer-director Brian Crano. We talked by phone about the persistent pressure to couple up, why Anna and Will are “a disaster,” and the joy of watching Bill Irwin dance.
Rebecca, you got married a couple years ago, so it seems like you were going through pretty much the opposite of what your character in Permission is going through when you were preparing to make this film: settling down in a way that you maybe never have before. Was having just gone through your own thought process about all of that part of what attracted you to this role?
Rebecca Hall: I wish it were as perfect as that. [laughs] Yeah, I see what you're saying, but I don't think it ever occurred to me. Also, I married an actor, so there's nothing sort of settled about the lifestyle of two actors. In the two years that we've been married, we've lived in various sorts of places and been on the move pretty constantly. I imagine that even when we start a family and that chapter sort of starts, it will be the same. I'm not sure there are any kind of neat parallels, if I'm being honest with you.
So what did attract you to the film?
Hall: Well, it's a combination of things. I've known the writer-director, Brian Crano, for a really long time. He's one of my oldest friends. I met him when he was 19 and I was 20. He was doing a rehearsed reading of his play in London. We've been very good friends ever since. We've always collaborated. The first short film he made was an adaptation of a short story that I wrote and acted in. We've always had a discourse about ideas, and I think I was kind of on board with this one from quite early on. We were having a lot of discussions about depicting a relationship that was difficult to question.
The obvious take on this story is that it's about what it is to be open in a relationship as opposed to monogamous. But I don't really think it is, because there are ethical ways of being non-monogamous, and this couple are useless, I think. They don't communicate; they don't set ground rules; they're a disaster. What it's really about is, what does it take to question whether you are sexually in a good relationship? To have an honest conversation with your partner, or try something else in the hopes that it might open up the possibility of having an honest conversation.
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