‘Armand’ Is a Big Social-Commentary Swing With a Stellar Performance
It’s the laugh that gets you.
Roughly halfway through Armand, the debut feature from Norwegian filmmaker Halfdan Ullmann T?ndel, we watch someone fall apart. A mother has been called into a parent-teacher conference. Her name is Elisabeth, she’s an actor of some renown, and is now largely associated with a tragedy that left her husband dead. Elisabeth has no idea why she’s been summoned to her child’s school. Soon, the parents of another student arrive. It seems that Armand, the woman’s son, threatened one of his peers. The fact that the nature of the boy’s statement was explicitly sexual is of the utmost concern to the school’s authorities. There’s also the worry that the youngster made good on this threat as well.
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By this point, we’ve watched Elisabeth suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous accusations, have her ability as a caregiver questioned, and endure suggestions that her spouse’s car accident may have not been so accidental. Everyone is trying to follow what passes for protocol in these types of situations, making sure their masks of social politeness are securely fastened. But not Elisabeth. She feels enraged, ambushed, attacked from all sides. It’s a death by a thousand insinuating cuts.
Then, in the middle of all this back and forth, so carefully couched in institutionally approved language and platitudes about protecting the children and performative handwringing over appropriate next steps, Elisabeth laughs. At first, it’s simply a titter. A nervous giggle. A rolling guffaw. Then the manic outbursts of amusement build and build. Everyone looks uncomfortable. Minutes pass. And waves upon waves of hysterical laughter seem to keep uncontrollably pouring out of her, the only logical response to the completely illogical, down-is-the-new-up scenario she finds herself in.
It’s a credit to Renate Reinsve, who plays Elisabeth, that this real-time car wreck of a sequence instantly enters the canon of screen crack-ups. An award-winning actor who’s been on a serious roll ever since 2021’s The Worst Woman in the World made her an international star in a blink, she’s the animating force in a film designed to turn maternal melodrama into something simultaneously intimate and operatic. That her extended, extraordinary breakdown scene is what you’ll likely remember most from this somewhat wobbly attempt at social commentary about the power of pointing fingers and the way people talk around taboo topics is definitely a tribute to her talent. If it also seems like damning the showcase that’s allowed her to go full Gena Rowlands with faint praise, well….
Yes, the wonderful supporting performances from the repertory company swirling around Reinsve deserve shout-outs, from Thea Lambrechts Vaulen’s bumbling teacher to Ellen Dorrit Petersen’s brittle accuser — who, we should point out, also happens to be the sister of Elisabeth’s late husband. Hidden agendas are abound. Armand’s behavior may have stemmed from serious problems closer to home. There are a handful of grand gestures thrown in for good measure, from recurring comic bits (the associate principal has a bad habit of getting nosebleeds at the worst possible moment) to not one but two inexplicable interpretive-dance vignettes. Slow-zooms into pictures on a school wall will drip with significance. Someone will indeed run down a hallway in slow-motion. The climax takes place in a rainstorm that’s as impressively staged as it is symbolically heavy-handed.
T?ndel comes from a serious filmmaking pedigree; his grandparents are Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. And while you get the sense that he’s still finding his own voice, it’s not a stretch to feel like the young writer-director inherited his grandfather’s keen interest in the nexus between psychology and pathology, knack for pushing hard on sociological pressure points, and lack of flinching at the uglier sides of human behavior. Ditto knowing how to center strong female characters and being unafraid to let strong actors play the full scales with them — Reinsve’s truly spectacular turn here didn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s simply that every other aspect of the storytelling feels stillborn or, worse, stuffed into spaces where they don’t quite fit. Armand won him the Camera d’Or at Cannes, which celebrates someone’s first film, and you feel like that laurel of encouragement works better as a watch-this-space signifier than a coronation of someone sprinting out of the gate. It’s decent if often frustrating debut, buoyed by a star that’s shouldering a lot of the needlessly complicated narrative burden. We can’t wait to see what T?ndel’s fourth film looks like.
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