Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		1.0

Permanent Blu-ray Movie Review

Cut It!

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 3, 2018

Permanent is the feature debut of writer/director Colette Burson, co-creator of the HBO series Hung. On the strength of this performance, Burson should stick to episodic TV. The longer narrative form doesn’t suit her talents.

Permanent recounts the trials and tribulations of the Dickson family after father Jim (Rainn Wilson) leaves the Army and relocates to an unidentified Virginia town so that he can study medicine. His wife, Jeanne (Patricia Arquette), takes up waitressing to support the family, and she obviously resents it, because she spends much of the movie glaring (or screeching) at her husband. Meanwhile, teenage daughter Aurelie (Kira McLean) must adapt to a new school, where she is immediately mocked for both her unusual first name and the disastrous perm she got from a beauty student, because her mom was too cheap to pay for the real thing.

Permanent toys with various genres without ever deciding what kind of film it wants to be. Incidents follow each other without any clear connection, other than Burson's affinity for caricature and grotesquerie. One running plot has Aurelie trying to befriend the only African-American student on the bus (Nena Daniels) because they're both outcasts. Another follows a resentful Jeanne's dalliance with their elderly new neighbor, Jerry (Michael Greene), who runs free therapy sessions and floats through the movie like some burned-out relic from the Sixties. Yet another continuing subplot concerns Jim's toupee, about which he's so self-conscious that he won't venture beyond the shallow end of the university's pool, even though swimming is a course requirement for his degree. (Why is it a requirement? Something vague and unexplained about the school's "religious" history. That's how lazily Permanent is plotted.)

Dysfunctional family relationships and teenage awkwardness are comedy staples, but they have to be explored through credible characters and narrative with a clear direction. Permanent has neither. It's little more than a series of unpleasant vignettes that quickly wear out their welcome.

Permanent Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Digitally shot by cinematographer Paula Huidobro (HBO's Barry), Permanent arrives on a 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from Magnolia Home Entertainment that exhibits all the usual virtues of digital capture: superior detail, excellent sharpness and an absence of noise or interference. Blacks are dark and solid, and colors are vivid but rarely bright. The average bitrate of 21.98 Mbps is typical of digitally acquired productions.

Permanent Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Permanent's 5.1 soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA. The surrounds provide a good sense of environmental ambiance and expand the score by Craig Wedren (a veteran of Hung), but this is a dialogue-driven project, and the track delivers it clearly.

Permanent Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted/Alternate Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:03).



• Getting Permanent with Rainn Wilson (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:12).



• Virginia Is for Lovers (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:10).



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:11).



• Also from Magnolia Entertainment: Trailers for Please Stand By, The Final Year and 2:22.



• BD-Live: "Check back later for updates."

Permanent Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Permanent is set in 1982, when Burson would have been about the same age as the unfortunately coiffed Aurelie, with whom she shares a name of French origin. The film has an autobiographical flavor, as if many of the incidents and details have been included because they're personally meaningful to the film's creator. But the significance is lost on the viewer, who keeps waiting for the eccentric details to cohere. They never do. Skip it.