Movie “Armand” – instruction manual for escalation

Is there a set procedure?” the young teacher Sunna wants to know. A six-year-old is said to have accused his classmate Armand of a sexual assault to his parents. The rector evasively tells Sunna that they have to proceed carefully because Elisabeth, the accused’s mother (the Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve plays a Norwegian actor), is a public figure. At the same time, the school management makes it clear that the whole thing has to be sorted out quickly: “What’s done is done.”

With such a nebulous briefing, the superiors send the insecure but highly motivated Sunna into battle, which is called: parent-teacher meeting. This resembles – out of embarrassment and fear of incorrect behavior – dancing around the bush, which results in an out-of-control fit of laughter and tears from the supposed defendant Elisabeth that makes film history.

The skillfully staged first half of the claustrophobic chamber play at Tatort Schule is initially more reminiscent of the humor of Roman Polanski’s comedy “The God of Carnage” (2011) than of lker Çatak’s more recent drama “The Teacher’s Room”. “Armand” is also limited to the adults, who act in a very childish manner, while the students are left out.

Director and screenwriter Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel explains that the incident between the children could be “completely innocent or very serious – depending on how you look at it and how you place it in the context.” “The film is much more about how we as adults construct our own realities so that they correspond to the perception of our identity and our lives than it is about a story about a conflict between two little boys.” The grandson of the Swedish film berserker Ingmar Bergman and the Norwegian actress and director Life Ullman worked at a primary school for a long time and experienced “how any behavior by children or their parents that was even a little outside the norm was almost frowned upon and watched very closely.”

In the interruptions of his filmic crisis meeting at the institution of school, different, more confidential encounters and new constellations develop between individual participants and bystanders in the hallway, in the washrooms and other evening-dreamy functional spaces that are enchantingly captured by Pål Ulvik Rokseth’s camera. For example, the father of the alleged victim approaches his opponent Elisabeth, and her emotional state is revealed in a broom-wielding dance with the cleaning man. In another surreal sequence, a pack of parents ensnares the star and mutates into an aggressive mob.

In the end, the viewer feels deceived not only in the question of guilt, but also in the expectation of seeing a coherent film. Unfortunately, Ullmann Tøndel’s script “Armand” disenchants with increasingly detailed and complicated information about the background of his staff, which does not develop from the events. Ambiguity and openness, which leave room for thinking and dancing, become an overly fixed procedure.

Was that also the reason why the 34-year-old was only able to implement his project when his intended leading actress, Renate Reinsve, celebrated success with “The Worst Person in the World” in Cannes in 2021? Was it above all his name that won the Bergman grandson the Camera d’Or for the best debut in Cannes? As the rector once said: “What’s through is through.” It remains to be hoped that Ullmann Tøndel will use his skills in a more focused manner in future projects.

»Armand«: Germany/Netherlands/Norway 2024. Director & script: Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel. With: Renate Reinsve, Ellen Dorrit Petersen. 117 minutes. Start: January 16th