Though set entirely inside the confines of a rambling Norwegian elementary school building on the eve of the summer holidays, and primarily concerning an “incident” between two students, “Armand” is notably lacking children. They are faces in photographs of classes past, perhaps, voices on the other end of the phone and silhouettes curled in their beds, but not characters in their own right — objects of the drama, as it were, and not its subjects. From this act of omission, and with a bravura lead performance by Renate Reinsve, writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel anatomizes a scandal and the broken family behind it.
But he also perceives that much of our current hand-wringing about the dangers of modern childhood glosses over — or covers up — who’s really responsible: adults. After all, when an allegation of “sexual deviation” brings two boys’ parents in for a long, tense conference, “Armand,” which recently premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival , emphasizes that what actually happened is “less important” to the grown-ups than their own agendas. While school officials strive to prevent the encounter — never depicted, described only second- or third-hand — from attracting the notice of higher authorities, Armand’s mother, Elisabeth (Reinsve), and Jon’s mother, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), wage a pitched battle of their own, one far more ferocious than that of lapsed friends or suburban rivals.
The for.
