There was no doubt in my mind, heading into Armand, that Renate Reinsve was going to deliver: She was enchanting as a restless millennial in Joachim Trier’s wry and exquisite 2021 film The Worst Person in the World. In the Scandi drama Armand, the debut film by writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel—the grandson of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, though there are more flashes of Gaspar Noé here—we meet Reinsve as Elisabeth, a mother summoned to her young son Armand’s primary school.

In the dark, ominous classroom setting, as she hears the accusations that he sexually abused another child, Elisabeth descends into a fit of incredulous, bitter laughter. And she keeps going—it lasts five painful minutes. Each giggle hits like a shovel, excavating new levels of horror, knocking at the walls we put up around uncomfortable truths and societal values. An interrogation evolves into an emotional spiral that’s hard to look away from.

At first slow and elongated, then at grotesque, breakneck turns, Tøndel presents an intense psycho-drama, with slashes of surrealism and a striking, geometric visual language. He offers no easy answers, only the tools to keep digging into the murk of our own humanity long after the film ends. —Anna Cafolla

Black Bag