Swedish actress, screenwriter and director Josephine Bornebusch conjures up a downbeat star vehicle for herself with “Let Go,” about a dysfunctional family’s trip to support their sixteen year-old in a pole-dancing competition.

Sweden, right?

There’s a catatonic grandfather to visit, a granny who figures gluten allergies are more proof that “these children are just plain spoilt,” a teen in open, foul-mouthed rebellion, a five-year-old who wears a masked costume everywhere because he’s indulged to the point where he’s out of control and a couples counselor husband who wants a divorce.

But before you get your hopes up, this mopey, morose melodrama chases away any notion that this will be a “Little Miss Sunshine” road comedy. There are no real laughs. And the few emotional moments contrived for the second and third act pack little punch. So all you’re really inclined to take away from it all is a short bout of the sads.

Stella (Bornebusch) is the machine that keeps the Holm family running. She gets everybody out the door, organizes the house, does the school pick-ups, supervises little boy Manne’s (Olle Tikkakoski) diet and indulges daughter Anna’s (Sigrid Johnson) pole dancing passion.

Husband Gustav (Pål Sverre Hagen) may give his best advice to his troubled-couples at work. But he’s completely checked-out of his own marriage. It’s not a shock to find out he’s cheating, but one can’t help but be appalled at how little he’s involved in his family.

For this effort, martyred Stella is cursed-out for the tenth time today when she challenges her daughter for forging her signature on a permission slip to complete in the big pole dancer contest in far-off Skåne. Her little boy adores over, but walks all over her, hogging every second’s attention.

It’s no wonder she wears the scowl of the relentlessly downtrodden. She doesn’t feel “seen.”

The last thing she wants to her from her above-it-all spouse is “I want to separate” (in Swedish, or dubbed into English). If she thought he wasn’t doing Jack around the house or with the family before, the future just darkened even further.

Nope. You’re not getting a divorce. Yes, we’re going to Skåne, and you’re coming along. That’s the “end of the discussion,” so Gustav can spare her the soothing, manipulative couples-counseler-speak and his talk of things she needs to “Let Go” of. They’re going.

And once there — Surprise! — they’re staying with his old-fashioned, estranged mother (Tone Danielsen) who is taking care of his post-stroke father.

Gustav is about to get a bellyful of “family.” But will Stella survive her own ultimatum?

Bornebusch the writer-director sets-up Gustav as the ultimate self-absorbed, distracted “villain” of the marriage, always on his phone with his mistress, but then takes some pains to explain his point of view.

The later act twists tend to over-reinforce the story arcs everyone is going through — Anna’s self-absorption tested by a flirtation with a straight-talking local boy (Leon Mentori), character “secrets” and the consequences of “losing” the out-of-control Manne one time too many.

Bornebusch goes heavy on the mother martyrdom, reaching for tears in the later scenes. One on or two of those scenes come close to delivering that “Where’s my hanky?” moment. And some of her “explaining” character motivations has the effect of softening the few emotional blows the story is meant to deliver.

It’s sober minded enough. Yet it’s all rather less satisfying than it might have been, and not all of that is due to our Swedish filmmaker and star’s reluctance to “Let Go” of judgement, Swedish parenting and “nobody’s really to blame” fence-sitting with her script.

But some of it is.

Rating: TV-MA, pole dancing, sex, lots of profanity

Cast: Josephine Bornebusch, Pål Sverre Hagen, Sigrid Johnson, Olle Tikkakoski,
Leon Mentori and Tone Danielsen

Credits: Scripted and directed by Josephine Bornebusch. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:50