Melbourne International Film Festival Review - Armand

 

“If you look at the surface you will see chaos. And if you look under the surface you will likely see we aren’t all that great either. But if you look just right. Not too much. Not too little. You’ll see we’re almost alright.”

Ominous, foreboding and claustrophobic, Armand is an escalating psychological slow burn that explores the blurry line between innocence and invasive in a suffocating chamber piece that flirts with the surreal but never really fully explores all its varied questions it presents. 

Discussion Points:

Armand is a slow burn psychological drama that dabbles with the surreal. Renate Reinsve is the bridge between the two - giving a captivating performance filled with incredible emotion, but also incredible physicality as the emotion becomes embodied in laughing fits, crying fits and dance sequences. The film take a mysterious and compelling self-contained setup and teases it out over two hours that go from tight, tense and suffocating to intense, overwhelming and excessive. The steady drip of information keeps you engaged, and then the film veers into interpretive choreographed dance sequences that leave you even more confused. The final surrealist sequence means the film goes almost 15 minutes without any dialogue until its last 3 minutes. It’s certainly a stylistic choice, and one that could’ve paid off had it felt more earned rather than forced for artistries sake. At its core, Armand is a film about childhood innocence and adult perversion - the fact that as innocence is lost as we age, the world becomes far more intense and invasive. An innocent touch of a child, is a far more suggestive touch from an adult. A playful game of tag becomes a terrifying pursuit by a stalker. But whilst Armand is about the titular child, he never appears, and we never get complete answers the swirling circle of accusations about him. An ambitious and ambiguous film that doesn’t full coalesce.