Will Boys Be Boys? — Armand
It’s an unfortunate regularity in American life that whenever something goes wrong with kids in school, the first instinct is to find someone to blame. I’m not talking about serious and severe disasters like shootings, but more mundane things like fights or bad grades. Is it the parents’ fault for not raising their child properly? Is it the school’s fault for not being more proactive? Is it ever just the child’s fault? Rather than examine the issue rationally and objectively (at least as objectively as possible when it comes to children), the default is to leap straight to judgment.
Apparently, this isn’t unique to the States, either, as we see in Norway’s Oscar submission, Armand, which won the Camera d’Or prize (Best Debut Feature) at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. A deep, intimate, and often uncomfortable look at how responsibility is assigned rather than accepted, the movie definitely has some rough edges, but is ultimately fascinating because of its complexity and outright refusal to make an easy target out of something potentially horrifying.
As rain clouds gather, Elisabeth (Renate Reinsve again showing why she’s one of the best actresses in the world) is called to her son’s elementary school after hours. There’s going to be a general meeting between parents and faculty to discuss end-of-term celebrations, but Elisabeth is summoned early. Assured by the teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen) that everything is fine and that nothing bad has happened, Elisabeth is still very uneasy. Why would she be called in separate from all the other parents for a meeting if there wasn’t an actual problem, and why must she wait for two other parents, Anders and Sarah (Endre Hellestveit and Ellen Dorrit Petersen) before she can find out what’s going on?
The slow burn is intentional to build early tension, and it might ring a bit false at times, particularly when the film opens with principal Jarle (Øystein Røger) telling Sunna how to “diplomatically” and “soberly” discuss the business at hand without his presence, and assistant principle Ajša (Vera Veljovic) conveniently gets sudden nosebleeds and has to pause proceedings while she excuses herself. I mean, it’s a solid 15 minutes before we even know who Armand is, as all we get is a hoarse voice over the phone talking very briefly to Elisabeth as she drives.
At long last, the shoe drops. Armand is Elisabeth’s son, and he apparently got into a scrap with Jon, the son of Anders and Sarah. The two are cousins, as Sarah is the sister of Elisabeth’s late husband, and they’ve grown up as best friends so far (they’re each six years old). The fight took place in the boys’ bathroom, and once it was over, the janitor discovered Jon on the floor, crying with his pants around his ankles. According to Anders and Sarah, Armand got jealous of Jon playing with another boy, and in his rage, threatened to beat Jon senseless and possibly assaulted him sexually.
Damn. That is a very heavy accusation, particularly to make towards a child who hasn’t even developed any kind of sexual desire. Sunna tries to moderate as best she can, but Elisabeth is beside herself. Jarle implies that Armand has had behavioral issues in the past, of which Elisabeth was never told, and now they’re basically accusing her son of being a rapist at age six. You can imagine how she takes the news. What’s worse is that even though the administrators concede that nothing can be proven, they’re acting as if the boy is guilty, and this “meeting” that they’ve blindsided her with is to determine what steps to take moving forward, including but not limited to keeping the boys separate for the rest of term, putting Armand in therapy, and involving both Child Welfare Services and the police.
The dichotomy between Elisabeth and Sarah is fascinating, as they operate on total opposite ends of the reactionary spectrum. Elisabeth has no idea how to process all this, while Sarah is calm but adamant that the school “take this seriously,” implying that the most swift and severe punishment should be inflicted. Not on Armand, mind you, but on Elisabeth. Eternally beating around the bush without actually verbalizing it, Sarah wants Armand taken away from Elisabeth and placed either in foster care or under hers and Anders’ custody.
The blocking of these scenes is incredible, considering this is the first feature film from Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel. The discussions in the classroom are kept in extremely close quarters, with the first break in the proceedings being used as an excuse to make them even closer. Sarah wants there to be no oxygen between them, and Jarle acquiesces because he believes it will aid in keeping things discreet, especially as the rest of the parents in the class start showing up. But really it’s to make Elisabeth as uncomfortable as possible, because Sarah resents her sister-in-law on several levels, not the least of which is that she blames Elisabeth for her brother’s death and because she disapproves of Elisabeth’s lifestyle as a well-known actress. Similar to the parole hearing scene in , Sarah tries to use Elisabeth’s vocation against her, suggesting that she’s only feigning ignorance at Armand’s past mistakes and acting dramatically just to try to elicit sympathy because she’s trained to do that.
Outside the classroom, the hallways of the school provide the opportunity for a masterclass in sound design and acoustics. The corridors are empty because the kids have already gone home for the day, so every step from the adult-sized shoes of the main cast members echoes throughout, creating a sense of isolation and paranoia. You never know how far your voice might carry, and you never know who might be listening around the corner. It does a far better job of ramping up the suspense than the nosebleed delay tactics, which are abandoned after the first act anyway. There’s the added touch of the school’s fire alarm, established early as ringing randomly because it’s broken, and every time it goes off it jangles everyone’s nerves.
Through it all, the parties dance around trying to find someone to bear the brunt of all this. Elisabeth believes that Jon is lying or exaggerating, because kids do that, and also because the terminology used to describe the attack by his parents doesn’t gel with what children that young typically say. What six-year-old even knows the word “anally,” much less how to use it as a threat? Sarah of course wants to condemn Elisabeth for having a life outside of motherhood, and even convinces Jarle that the demanding nature of Elisabeth’s job drove her husband to suicide, appealing to Jarle’s longstanding biases, as he’s been principal since Sarah and Elisabeth themselves were students there. Sunna is tasked with coming up with a protocol that Jarle can pretend they’ve always had for situations like this, because of course they don’t. Even the most cynical among us would not think a first grader capable of rape. Elisabeth even succumbs to the gaslighting at one point, thinking that maybe things are indeed her fault, because maybe Armand overheard something her late (and abusive) husband said in the heat of his own violent tendencies towards her.
No one knows what the truth is, and it’s a key point here that the adults are acting like quarreling children when the children themselves aren’t involved. In fact, we see no young actors until the final 10 minutes, which is in keeping with the overall driver of the narrative — the fact that no one is willing to even entertain the possibility that kids just act out sometimes. Innocence is categorically not on the table. We must think of the children, but never consider how children develop and behave. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that the two did have a scuffle in the bathroom, but that’s it. There are any number of reasons why Jon would have his pants down, the most obvious being that he’s a six-year-old boy, and when they’re that young, boys pull down their pants to pee. The odds that this is a form of bullying (or the much worse thing Sarah suggests) are microscopic by comparison.
But as we see, the truth doesn’t matter, only perception and rumor. In a moment of weakness, Sunna tells a fellow teacher what’s going on just to vent, and he takes that information straight to the other parents, all of whom instantly convict Armand on pure hearsay and Elisabeth on the same provincial biases that Sarah has about her work. It culminates in an absolutely brilliant scene where Elisabeth runs outside due to the emotional distress and another faulty fire drill. By this point the clouds have progressed to a torrential downpour, and Elisabeth finds shelter in a small overhang. Moments later, the rest of the parents, the staff, and Anders and Sarah all emerge, and everyone is willing to stand in the pouring rain rather than share the same space as Elisabeth, even though it’s drier. That’s some powerful cinematography, and the best encapsulation of peer pressure I’ve seen in a long time.
The thematic weight of all this is, for the most part, handled well. Elisabeth is a deeply sympathetic character, not just because she’s being attacked, but because she represents a fear that a lot of parents have. You never want to think that your child, your precious baby, might be a bad kid. So to have that information thrust upon her without notice (pointedly, Anders and Sarah discussed the situation with Jarle beforehand without Elisabeth’s knowledge in order to formulate this plan) is a gut punch and a half on its own. But to escalate it so far as to suggest that he might be a monster is more than anyone could reasonably handle.
There are some parts that ultimately don’t land, and I think it’s what doomed the film’s chances of getting nominated for International Feature in the end. As I mentioned, there are some areas where the stakes are raised really well, but that just makes the more artificial moments like the nosebleeds feel like we’re just circling the wagons waiting for the reveal. Similarly, there’s a sexual angle to everything that really doesn’t work. I’m not talking about Armand, but of Sarah, who seems to get off on watching Elisabeth squirm. Anders is far more empathetic (but he’s hardly guiltless in this situation, as is revealed late), offering Elisabeth an ear to confide and a shoulder to cry, but he keeps it clandestine, as if it’s some form of emotional cheating. At least, that’s the way Sarah sees it, because she knows all about it, and tries to seduce him in another classroom by using their friendship as ammo. Finally, there are several scenes where Elisabeth goes into something resembling a trance, dancing about the hallways and being ambushed by judgmental parents from all sides. It feels like a deleted scene from the Suspiria remake, and it just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the story. The amount of time spent on these sequences winds up lending credence to Sarah’s remonstrations, and that undermines the overall plot.
Still, I was genuinely impressed with how this film turned out. Reinsve is a supreme acting talent, but the rest of the cast did tremendous work as well, particularly Petersen and Vaulen. The camera work and staging are a little bit obvious, but still executed amazingly. And of course, the story is outstanding. In a world where everyone points fingers whenever a child’s school life isn’t perfect, this is a movie that shows that there are no easy answers, but a willingness to accept responsibility for your own actions is essential if anything positive is to be done.
Grade: B+
Join the conversation in the comments below! What film should I review next? How many International Feature submissions were you able to see? How have you had to deal with a child being disciplined at school? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!
Originally published at http://actuallypaid.com on February 10, 2025.
