Armand starts out with a good and interesting premise. A single mother, Elizabeth (Renate Reinsve who was in The Worst Person in the World which has a similar vibe to this film) is called into her six-year-old son Armand’s primary school for a meeting.

There has been an incident between Armand and his classmate Jon. Jon‘s parents Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit) have also been called in and the job of dealing with the incident has given to junior teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen). 

Elizabeth is a successful actress, something that is commented on by principal Jarle (Øystein Røger) and there is definitely a sense that she may need to be treated differently, or more sensitively, because of this fact. The mediation of the incident soon breaks down and most of the film deals with the gradually unravelling and uncovering of hidden stories behind each of the families’ lives.

It’s one of those films that feels a bit claustrophobic in how close we are to each person, like Anatomy of a Fall as my film buddy L pointed out. It also has similarities to this film in the way it plays with your sense of allegiance to the two different sides of the conflict and how much you believe either person. It also tries to explore some of the murkier aspects of child abuse and inappropriate sexual behaviour in children although this eventually feels like a device for a broader social critique.

There’s an element of abstractness to some scenes – there’s an odd sequence between Elizabeth and the janitor and an extended scene where she is physically overwhelmed by the teaching staff, as if it is a nightmarish dance or theatre sequence. It leaves you feeling that there is an element of performance to some of what we are seeing, and there is some ambiguity towards the end as to who has been telling the truth and who has been manipulating everybody. There’s no definitive answer and I wasn’t the only one who left scratching my head as to what the point of the film was. 

It’s an intriguing watch though, mostly because of the intense performances by Reinsve and Petersen and the awful surreal emptiness of the school setting that somehow brings up some fundamental nightmares for anyone.