Director Philip Gröning won plaudits for his 2005 documentary Into Great Silence, an extraordinary study of life within a Carthusian monastery. His debut drama, however, proves a more hazardous enterprise. The Police Officer's Wife softly circles the thorny subject of domestic abuse. It shows us the humble home and the wide-eyed child, the hair-trigger husband and wife's bruised limbs. True to his documentary pedigree, Gröning intends to bear witness rather than apportion blame, or even explain. But the approach proves tentative and overcomplicated. Slow dissolves and interminable chapter headings (56 in all) maintain an exasperating arm's length from the meat of the story. Groening shows us the house; he never lets us inside.