Armand (2024)

I can to watch this movie because it is on the short list for International Feature Films for the 2025 Oscars, which is a list that I really enjoy--a curated selection of movies that being an overworked home body, I would never venture out to see (a retirement goal for me is to buy a year long pass to the independent movie theater in my small town and spend some time in the middle of the day each week watching movies. It is also the first movie written and directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, who is the grandson of the director Ingmar Bergman and the actress Liv Ullmann. Enough said, if you are familiar with their work. In my eyes, this is a movie that has a text and a subtext--whenever that happens, I am never sure if the subtext I perceive is the one that was intended. And I do think that this is an instance where you really cannot say much about the movie without tainting the experience for first time viewers. Most concisely, the parents of two six year old boys who have had a fight at school, but it is really about so much more, including kinship, jealousy, revenge, and the manipulation of children to serve the intentions of their parents.