After her 2021 breakout in The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve’s 2022 and 2023 seemed fairly quiet for the viewer, but she was working on no shortage of projects that finally saw the light of day this year. Following A Different Man, Handling the Undead, Another End, and Presumed Innocent, she leads Armand, which marks the feature debut from Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, the grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman. Norway’s selection for Best International Film was picked up by IFC, who have unveiled the first trailer and news that they’ll release the Cannes selection for a qualifying run in NYC starting November 29, followed by a limited release on February 7 and a wide release on February 14 next year.
Here’s the synopsis: “When defamed actress Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve) is abruptly called into a parent-teacher meeting after hours, she is presented with scathing allegations that trigger a tangled web of accusations between parents and faculty. As Elisabeth struggles to uncover the truth amid the empty school rooms and dark corridors, a chaotic fight for redemption arises where desire, madness and obsession prevail.”
Savina Petkova said in her Cannes review, “How is a child’s life different from that of adults today? What is it like growing up around stimuli, in a world that is always-online, and with varying degrees of supervision? Is complete safeguarding even possible? These are questions contemporary cinema has been asking a lot in the last few years. Many classroom dramas, including 2023’s The Teacher’s Lounge, have explored complex ways the in-and-out-of-school dynamics intertwine, usually through the prism of a single incident. Armand, by Halfdan Ullmann Tønde, opts for that micro-as-macro approach and refuses to pass any judgment. As a result the film stays in this moral limbo between truth and lie, accusation and defense, instead zooming into its characters’ psychological states. Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve) has been summoned to an emergency parent-teacher meeting after her six-year-old son Armand is accused of crossing boundaries with his classmate Jon. What actually happened, we do not know.”
See the trailer below.