Cinema Without Borders: Armand - Mothers and sons

Sometimes it takes just a moment for a film to come alive. A dance sequence with Norwegian actor Renate Rainsve swaying and swinging in delirium occupies the heart of Halfdan Ullmann Tondel’s debut feature film, Armand. It alone is more bewitching and beguiling than the sum of the film’s other parts. The “meltdown dance”, if one may call it that, becomes a manifestation of the frenzied, frenetic, and troubled mind and broken spirit of Elizabeth, the bohemian single mother played by Rainsve, whose 6-year-old son Armand has been accused of crossing the line of decency with a fellow student named Jon. What follows is a pursuit of truth in an elementary school about what truly occurred between two 6-year-old boys, one in which allegations and insinuations, arguments, and counterarguments keep getting traded to make things hazier than clear and comprehensible.

Summoned for an enquiry by the school authorities along with Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen), the parents of the other kid, the film essentially becomes a probe into Elizabeth’s mind and psyche and that of the other adults involved. The film is sensitive enough in refusing to bring the kids, including the titular character, in the picture. We only meet the parents and the school staff. Tondel makes it all about the game of the adults, the complexity of their relationships, the insecurities, rivalries, and jealousies that motivate them, how their actions and reactions take a toll on the hearts and minds of the young and innocent, how a lot of what the kids say or do could just be a mindless mimicking of the elders. A continuing legacy that's often disquieting and mortifying.

Talking of the filmmaker himself, Tondel, sports a great cinematic lineage, being the grandson of the legendary Liv Ullman and Ingmar Bergman, and he counts Thomas Vinterberg, Luis Bunuel, Isabella Eklof and Brian De Palma as his influences. He fashions his debut as a chamber drama—incessant talk between people in a defined, confined space and things pirouetting as much on the spoken word as the quicksilver changes of expression on the human faces caught in tight close-ups.

There’s a lot to debate on. Are the two kids even capable of imagining, understanding, let alone being part of the act they are being examined for? Can they be probed without even being spoken to? Which version of the story to believe in? How to ensure that neither of them will come out of the proceedings scarred? Armand poses valid questions on paper but doesn’t rise above being a regular procedural, stylish but shallow. The probe lacks the depth, angularities and layers of two recent, widely celebrated films—with kids in focus—that kept coming back to my mind—Anatomy of a Fall and The Teacher’s Lounge.

Armand begins on an intriguing note but can’t sustain it for long. It piques interest but isn’t satisfying enough. The twists and turns of the plot feel showy and contrived rather than organic, make things needlessly complicated and leave the audience feeling manipulated rather than moved, more so when there are no clear answers and closures on offer. The film could have explored the theme of unconventional motherhood—or the questioning of it—more intensely but refuses to go that way wholeheartedly. And that’s certainly for no fault of Rainsve, who gives it her all, as she had done earlier in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World. This act of hers, perhaps, is a few notches above. A blistering and brilliant portrayal that begs for more adjectives to describe it fittingly, it quite clearly stems from Rainsve’s involvement with, commitment to and compassion for the character. But for her mesmerising presence there’s little else that manages to linger on in the mind when it comes to the Camera d’Or winner for the best first feature film at Cannes.