Unless an individual is beyond lacking in talent, I tend to be quite ambivalent about the idea of nepotism as a negative element of art – it is entirely possible that someone can get a substantial boost by being related to notable figures in the industry and also talented enough that their work can be accurately assessed using the same artistic metric, granted it is done without using their connections as too much of a crutch. One of the most intriguing artistic dynasties we see forming is the descendants of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman – the former is arguably one of the greatest screen performers in the history of cinema, whereas the latter is unquestionably amongst the most important filmmakers of his generation, and someone who continues to be a guiding force for countless artists across generations. Their daughter is Linn Ullmann, an exceptional writer and well-regarded academic whose novel Unquiet is a poetic and harrowing dramatisation of the relationship she had with her parents in her younger years. Her son Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel has turned to filmmaking in his own right, hoping to continue the family legacy. His directorial debut is Armand, a psychological thriller about a group of parents meeting to discuss questionable behaviour from one of their children in the schoolyard, with the faculty doing their best to work with them to find a resolution, only to unsettle very tender subjects, particularly those relating to the fragile and emotionally unstable Elisabeth, whose son is the perpetrator of some very strange behaviour against his classmates. A premise that seems simple in theory, Armand somehow spirals out of control to become one of the most incompetently made films of the past decade, a work that features very little artistic merit or any effective social message, despite being directed by someone who wholeheartedly believed that he was capturing both in tandem, rather than crafting a film that is bordering on ludicrous at the best of times, leading to a frustrating and bewildering experience that never makes much sense, either theoretically or in practice.

Armand is the kind of film that attempts to convince you of its virtue and social importance from the very start – and the opening scenes, being a sequence of shots set to the most melodramatic music, immediately make it clear that it is being crafted by someone who takes their work far too seriously, to the point of it being quite unsettling and vaguely pompous, both of which are persistent qualities of this film. A good rule of thumb when it comes to socially-charged dramas is that if you need to constantly remind the audience what your film is about, then you’re telling the story quite poorly, and from the first moments, Ullmann Tøndel is evidently far too focused on the ideas more than their execution. It doesn’t help that several films tell almost the same stories – Yasmina Reza’s brilliant God of Carnage and Fran Kranz’s exceptional Mass are both films about parents meeting with each other to discuss the actions of their offscreen children after some particular event spurs them to discuss the issues with one another before it all spirals out of control and harsh emotions come to the forefront. If you remove the comedic chaos of the former and the hard-hitting emotion of the latter, you will ultimately get Armand, a film that exists as a lacklustre husk formed clearly in the image of these aforementioned works and several others, but which lacks any clear message of what it wanted to say. This particular brand of social realist drama is only effective if there is a clear message, since the moment the viewer has to step out of our position as passive observers of this particular chapter in the human condition, the more difficult it is to engage with the story, since we are suddenly searching for meaning rather than having it presented to us in a way that makes sense. Each revelation in Armand is weak and unconvincing, and it is peppered with thematic non-sequiturs that only elongate an already lengthy film in a bundle of misguided ideas, none of which have any real impact or nuance, despite the potential to do something fascinating with these concepts.

However, we can forgive a film for being predictable or lacking in originality if there is at least something valuable contained somewhere, which usually is found in the execution of its underlying themes. Unfortunately, Armand is as badly directed as it is poorly written, which is astonishing considering we’ve seen examples of similarly misguided films that either had a strong script that was executed badly, or a bland piece of writing elevated by good direction. This film not only lacks either, but seems to be actively under the delusion that what it is doing is daring and compelling, when in reality it’s far from being even marginally meaningful. There are several moving parts in Armand, and yet none of them come together to create a cohesive mechanism of a film. Instead, we have a film that is hopelessly dull in both the narrative and how it manifests on screen – as said previously, there is a story that runs through the film, but which is stretched out over two insufferable hours as we see these characters oscillate between bickering with each other and peering out windows into the distance as they wax poetic on the nature of reality. Neither of these elements add anything to the film, and they actively seem to be in opposition to one another, particularly in the latter portions where, instead of tying everything up in a meaningful package and allowing the underlying message (or whatever the director intended to say with this story – we can’t realistically say that this film had much of a message in the first place), Ullmann Tøndel just allows everything to fall apart and become a cavalcade of chaos that we are manipulated into thinking is artistically-resonant, when in reality its the painful lecturing of someone who genuinely believes himself to be the smartest voice in the room, and where this film simply serves as an opportunity to throw a few concepts together and hope that something coherent emerges. Unfortunately, the results indicate the opposite, since the dreary filmmaking (consisting of shades of beige and grey previously unknown to cinema are placed front and centre) only highlights the absolute ineptitude of the narrative and makes us wonder where the supposed merits can actually be found.

You would at least expect a film like Armand, which fashions itself as a character-driven drama, to feature strong performances. However, this is yet another area in which the film spirals out of control without realizing how much of an impact it is having on the viewer’s experience, since there is not a single decent performance to be found anywhere in this film, a fact that is only exacerbated by the realization that the cast consists of some of the region’s most promising young actors and a couple of veterans, meaning that the cast itself is strong in theory, but they are not only given very little to do, but actually tend to veer towards being quite bad, based on the characters that they play and the extent to which Ullmann Tøndel uses them. The film is marketed as being anchored by Renate Reinsve, which is not an inexplicable choice – her work in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World immediately established her as a major new talent, and films like Handling the Undead and A Different Man received enough acclaim for her work to have her positioned as someone who will continue to be quite a prominent force in both her native Norway and elsewhere. Her performance in Armand is beyond ludicrous, mainly because she is given such a hollow, meaningless character that is somehow supposed to be resonant and moving; her depiction of a woman teetering dangerously close to a complete psychological collapse seems like a good showcase for her talents, but ultimately lacks anything particularly meaningful when it is put into practice. She toggles between overlong monologues that contain very little merit in terms of developing her as a character, and more inexplicable moments, such as bouts of hysterical laughter and the occasional impromptu dance (which is more appropriately described as drunken flailing), which seem to exist to show her complexity, but ultimately conveys the sense that Reinsve is nothing more than a ragdoll to a director who simply does not know how to write a character than vaguely resembles any actual human being, and his actors are not given the space to elevate the material and ultimately become complicit in the dastardly mediocrity that drives this film.

Armand is a film that is so poorly made and incompetent, it can’t even be recommended for the sake of being entertained at its shortcomings, because even at its worst, it comes across as hopelessly boring more than anything else. There isn’t an ounce of effective humour in this film (and we can’t even credit this to the sombre nature of the story, since there are clear instances where it is trying and failing to add some levity, which is rendered as painfully awkward at the best of times), and the tone just keeps getting more dull as it progresses, losing any potential opportunity to be more than just a repulsively dull chamber drama that says nothing in the loudest and most shrill voice imaginable, which is ultimately the core shortcoming that prevents it from even being vaguely likeable. I’m sure that Ullmann Tøndel has promise as a filmmaker and that whatever he does next will hopefully be an improvement – but this is a blind assessment, since there’s absolutely nothing in Armand that indicates that he has the gifts necessary to make the kinds of films that he seems to be interested in crafting, or that he has much skill as either a writer or director, since both elements are deeply unconvincing as presented in this film. Hopefully we can attribute these major flaws to the fact that this is his first film, and that the next project (should he venture into directing again – when you come from a family with such an impressive legacy, sometimes it is easier to just remain in the shadows rather than trying to follow their contributions to the medium) will be a major improvement, since this film is frustrating and unconvincing at even the most supposedly impactful of moments. Rarely telling its story well and often veering towards the intensely melodramatic at moments where it should have exercised restraint, Armand is a lacklustre debut and a film that quite simply should not have been made if this is the final product – the previously mentioned works tell the same story with more unique perspectives and bespoke ideas, and ultimately prove that the most succinct criticism of Armand is that it isn’t only badly made and artistically extremely limited, but quite simply unnecessary in absolutely every way.