Armand – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel
Writer – Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel
Stars – Renate Reinsve, Ellen Dorrit Petersen, Endre Hellestveit

Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve) is an actress but also a widowed mother of a six-year-old boy, Armand. She has been called to his primary school for a meeting. The film begins with a long sequence of her driving to the meeting. The meeting must be taking place outside school hours, as it is eerily quiet.

She is met by Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen), who informs her that a complaint has been made that  Armand has sexually abused his friend and classmate Jon. She informs Elisabeth that the complaint has been made by Jon’s parents, Sarah (Ellen Dorritt Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit). Elisabeth, who is inevitably rattled, asks some well-placed questions of Sunna, and it transpires that Sunna is out of her depth. She is joined by the principal Jarle (Oystein Roger) and his deputy Ajsa (Vera Veljovic-Jovanovic). Gradually, it is revealed there is a back story between Elisabeth, Sarah and Anders, and Sarah is the sister of Elisabeth’s deceased husband. The meeting is intense. The two protagonists are, after all, sisters-in-law with history, and the allegation itself is explosive. Tondel, who also wrote the script and is the grandson of  Ingmar Bergman, heightens the tension with the large school being so quiet. Tondel less explicably has two long dance sequences. In one of these, Elisabeth dances with a man who is apparently a school cleaner, and then a second one in which she dances within a writhing mass of bodies.

Reinsve is in command as she tries to assimilate the accusations that have been made against Armand, and in the meeting, when she takes on Sarah in defence of her son. She conveys the whole variety of emotions that any parent would experience in such circumstances. She is impressive.

The setting of an almost empty, large, hundred-year-old school building makes for an unsettling backdrop. The nature of the allegations, if made by anyone, would be unsettling, but especially in this case by a six-year-old against another six-year-old. All of this worked, but the dance sequences did not. It is a pity they were included. The film would be more commanding without them.