‘Armand’ Review: Renate Reinsve is Electric as a Woman on the Verge in Halfdan Ullman Tøndel’s Enigmatic Debut | Cannes

Ever since Renate Reinsve stunned the Cannes Film Festival as a disaffected millennial in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World in 2021, the big concern is how she could possibly top it. That role, as a meandering med school dropout named Julie, was one of the freshest heroines in an age. Julie was messy and unpredictable, captivating and alive — and Trier’s film announced Reinsve as one of the most exciting actors around today. 

It’s an astonishing feat to live up to, especially as the Norwegian actor returns to the very place that launched her. Here, she teams up Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, who also just so happens to be the grandson of cinematic icons Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann. Those are unenviable shoes to fill, but Ullmann Tøndel rises to the task with a tense classroom drama that eschews easy answers. Set almost entirely within the walls of a primary school, a clash between a pair of boys becomes the catalyst for a volatile reckoning for every person involved. 

Barrelling through the forests in a rickety car is Elisabeth (Reinsve), a mother who has been mysteriously called into her son Armand’s primary school for a meeting, the subject of which she knows nothing about. Yet she’s just as reckless making her way to the classroom, the stomping of her shoes echoing down the hallway like a Godzilla in kitten heels prepared for a destructive confrontation. She sits down with junior teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) and parents Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit), whose son Jon alleges that Armand sexually assaulted him. 

Information is drip-fed to the audience in tandem with Elisabeth, making her frustrations all the more understandable when the school’s staff refuse to answer her questions. When an explanation seems clear, Ullmann Tøndel’s tricky screenplay drops additional context to throw you off the scent: Elisabeth is a former actor, we learn, she could just be really good at lying; Armand has a history of “incidents” with other classmates, though that is news to his mother. And so on, until connecting the dots becomes an insurmountable task and all you’re left with is a tangled web of conflicting truths and lies and the stories that reside between. Armand begins on a blank page that gradually comes alive in vivid color. 

There’s a focus on the particularities of language, and the intent behind what words are being said. Is it “sexual deviation” or a “troubling incident”? Does a six-year-old even have the vocabulary to articulate exactly what he experienced? At the same time, every member of staff is difficult to read, each unsure whether to downplay the incident or escalate it. While the one faculty head with a concrete plan can’t find the opportunity to explain it thanks to her frequent nosebleeds. A light smattering of humor only exacerbates the discomfort.

Ullmann Tøndel makes the most out of the geometric architecture of the school: rooms warp, staircases box Elisabeth in the frame, a red tiled bathroom evokes a crimson prison. The empty hallways are both isolating and suffocating. The dim light of the late afternoon sets the tone for the ghostly liminal space of a school after hours. And the periodic, incessant ringing of a broken fire alarm only intensifies the constant sense of unease that hangs in the classroom. 

As the day stretches on, conversations remain circular. When the truth will seemingly never be clear, the only course of action left is to move on — but these parents are stubborn, resolute in their child’s innocence in ways more personal to them than just their love for their sons. But if Ullmann Tøndel is intent on resisting easy solutions, his film gets lost in its own loop. The director stretches an already simple premise ludicrously thin, especially as the film veers towards the abstract by its meandering conclusion. A pair of emotionally climactic sequences run exhaustively long — arguably too long, even — and while Reinsve is captivating in both, pushing her body to frightening and exhilarating limits, there is the sense that the actor is working overtime to pad out a film that pushes itself further than it needs to. 

Unsurprisingly, Reinsve is the standout at the center of it all, as her son’s alleged actions causes everything else that’s buried to rise to the surface. Stuck in a perilous limbo, her emotional spiral is a captivating watch, captured by Ullmann Tøndel and cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth in intimate close-ups. It’s a mesmerizing, undefinable performance exemplified best in an unending laughing fit that Elisabeth can’t seem to contain. Her head rolls back, saliva falls from her lips, and a feeling of bemusement makes way for concern and fear. With as little as a giggle, Reinsve has you in the palm of her hand. Like the film itself, Elisabeth is a prickly enigma, and it’s impossible to look away.

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival where Armand premiered in the Un Certain Regard section. Armand currently does not have U.S. distribution.