Armand Review

With her astounding performance in 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, the cinema world fell in love with Renate Reinsve. Her ability to capture the duality of early adulthood was uncanny, infusing the chaos of self-discovery with the vulnerability of knowing you’re a mess. That kind of virtuosity had cinephiles eager for her next steps, which finally came last year when she appeared in four movies. The most lauded of the bunch was A Different Man, in which she is an excellent supporting character. For her next turn as a lead, we had to wait just a little longer for Armand, which won director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel the 2024 Caméra d’Or.

From the beginning, we get shades of The Teachers’ Lounge. Something has happened at this elementary school between a couple of the boys, but we won’t learn what until Elizabeth (Reinsve) does, rendering us just as gobsmacked as she. The cowardly principal Jarle (Øystein Røger) tasks the boys’ teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) with handling the parents alone, so it’s her job to awkwardly convey the events. Elizabeth’s son, the titular Armand, is accused of a horrific act of bullying made all the more stomach-turning by both he and Jon being merely six years old.

The allegation is shocking, and no one knows how to handle it. Sunna fumbles her words constantly, simultaneously confusing Elizabeth and causing Jon’s mother Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) to repeatedly implore her and the school to take this seriously. Elizabeth is understandably defensive, especially when she learns no one else saw it, giving her cover to conveniently ignore the state in which the staff found Jon. Sarah proceeds to voice other issues she has or has had with Elisabeth, most of which are news to everyone in the room. The school is not at all equipped to deal with such sensitive situations, and every attempt made by Jarle or assistant principal Ajsa (Vera Veljovic) just makes things worse. So it should come as no surprise that Sunna quickly loses control of the discussion, and tensions climb ever higher as no progress is made.

Despite frequent assertions they’re concerned with the safety of the children and preventing the event’s recurrence, it’s immediately clear the adults are acting out of self-interest. Hammering that home is Tøndel’s wise decision to never show us either child, nor to leave the school grounds. As in fellow Scandinavian movie The Hunt, a child’s accusation of grave wrongdoing takes on a life of its own separate from the situation. The accused is treated as guilty until proven innocent, an absurd standard that can never be surmounted. Armand similarly attempts to grapple with the difficult balance between believing victims, the unreliability of children, parents’ desire to protect their offspring, and the ulterior motives of adults.

The pacing in the first half is absolutely impeccable. The screenplay centers Elizabeth, so we’re brought up to speed along with her. New details are doled out little by little, and unassuming conversations often include mundane commentary, painting a vague picture that slowly gets colored in. Every little bit comes to reflect on the situation at hand, aiding in our understanding of the relationships and history between these adults and the children. Additionally, each performance is pitch-perfect and precisely written, consciously embodying a recognizable type of person likely to trigger your own judgement of the situation. As expected, Reinsve is given by far the most complicated and nuanced role, and she is utterly electric. Oscillating between angry and defensive and apologetic and stunned and bemused, she balances on a knife’s edge, never missing a step. Even her most inexplicable actions betray a rich inner life to which we simply are not privy.

However, Tøndel can’t keep it up. He’s been content forcing us to sit in our discomfort, leaving the truth ambiguous, redirecting the movie’s focus to the reactions of the adults. But as tensions rise and rumors spread, with the audience unsure of how this will end, his confidence wavers. Enough new information comes to light to definitively communicate the disturbing truth, letting much of the tension out of the room. In a film built such that the event is only the inciting incident, to recenter it late in the film is an odd choice that undermines much of what came before. The Hunt works because we witness the inciting incident, baking its conflict with the accusations into the film’s DNA. But in Armand, our inability to know is part of the point. That we eventually do reduces the poignancy of the whole exercise, and drastically changes its message.

Some weaknesses of the script begin to show themselves at the same time. Its deliberate pace convinced us to hold a few seemingly inexplicable actions in our minds on the faith they would become important later. But as the air rushes out of the balloon, it becomes clear they were never intended to lead anywhere. As they don’t deepen our understanding of the characters or story or who they are, reflection reveals them to be superfluous touches to simply keep our attention. While Tøndel isn’t obligated to connect everything to craft a satisfying movie, enough pile up to become distracting.

The unfortunate effect of a movie failing to stick the landing is that you leave the theater disappointed. If you’re not careful, it can cloud your opinion of the rest of the film, and cause you to forget what came before. The fact is this is an incredibly engaging movie, far funnier than you might guess, and they make the most out of their limited setting. The layered interactions between the adults make for endless subtext, and the broader difficulty of how to handle upsetting behavior between young children has no easy answer. The result is an interesting albeit imperfect thriller with something to say. And I’ll never complain too loudly about that.