“Armand” Needs Discipline

Armand (Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, 2024) 2 out of 5 stars

I became a fan of Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve after seeing her in The Worst Person in the World, and then A Different Man, in both of which films she offered fully engaged performances of complex characters. She delivers an equally intricate interpretation of her role in Armand, the debut feature of director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, but though that is almost reason enough to see the film, the surrounding script and mise-en-scène do everything to undermine her work. The resulting clash between talent and chaotic pretension provide some form of entertainment value, but only for so long. Armand, like its unseen titular child, could benefit from a measure of discipline.

Whether the boy actually needs correction is a matter of debate, as we find out after an opening sequence that initially presents what seems like a slam-dunk case against him. We are in an elementary school, where the principal, the head nurse, and a teacher hurriedly confer about an as-yet-unexplained conflict between two students. The details are initially vague, with quick half-utterances spoken on the way to a conference with parents. Who did what to whom we don’t yet know, but it appears serious.

By the time Elisabeth, the mother played by Reinsve, arrives at the school, summoned for a meeting about which she knows very little, two other adults are already there. They are the parents of Jon, a boy they claim was assaulted by Armand, Elisabeth’s 6-year-old son. And not just assaulted, but possibly sexually threatened (and maybe more). Elisabeth is blindsided, and expresses as much. From the start, she is at a disadvantage.

There are more particulars that soon come out, including her complicated (and longstanding) relationship to Jon’s mother and father, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Longing for Today) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit, Amundsen). Elisabeth is something of a public figure: an actress who has undergone a recent tragedy leaving her widowed. Everyone in the room, including the teacher leading the meeting, Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, Munch), treat her as a volatile element, perhaps not able to meet the moment nor, maybe, even be a parent.

As the stakes are raised in a chess game with ever-changing rules, Elisabeth and others, including the cowardly head of school (Øystein Røger, Amundsen) and the nurse whose nose inexplicably bleeds constantly, experience what could be hallucinations, flashbacks, or some additional manifestations of hysteria. There is also a janitor—the one person of color in the picture—who serves as a Scandinavian variant of the Magical Negro trope. Symbolism and surrealism combine with very little meaning, just anxious portent.

We should always applaud cinematic ambition, for no one wants stories that look and sound like every story. But experimentation works best when grounded in narrative, however loose, or at the very least thematic unity. There’s very little of either here, leaving Reinsve high and dry to work things out on her own. She’s always watchable, but in Armand she mostly just flails about, as does the movie itself.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Christopher Llewellyn Reed is a film critic, filmmaker, and educator, as well as Film Festival Today's Editor. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.