Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel takes some big swings with his first feature Armand, not all of which connect, but the ambition and risk-taking are largely impressive.

A single-setting drama that unfolds in an echo-filled elementary school after hours, it stars Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World) as local celebrity Elisabeth, the mother of never-met Armand, a first-grade boy who is accused by his classmate Jon, also never seen, of sexual abuse.

When the boys’ teacher and key school staffers call a meeting with parents to decide the next steps, Elisabeth clashes with Jon’s parents, Sarah (Ellen Dorrit Petersen) and Anders (Endre Hellestveit), although not all is as it seems. The basic setup recalls, among other stories about accusations, Roman Polanski’s adaptation of stage play Carnage, but Armand gets much weirder as it goes on, with choreographed dance sequences and melodramatic revelations that feel contrived and tacked on to make the film more arthouse and less issues-driven-middlebrow.

Reception in Cannes has been largely warm following its debut in the Un Certain Regard strand, and Armand has racked up some offshore sales.

Bit by bit, Ullmann Tondel’s screenplay reveals that Elisabeth and Sarah have more history than shared playdates for their kids. They’ve known each other since they were children at this very same school, and Elisabeth was married to Sarah’s brother, who is now dead, possibly from suicide after a tempestuous relationship with Elisabeth. Reinsve plays her character here as a woman trying to live as normal a life as possible and be the best mother she can be, even though she’s well aware how her fame changes the dynamic in every room she enters — though egalitarian-minded Norwegians often try to seem unimpressed.

That’s certainly the case with the boys’ classroom teacher Sunna (Thea Lambrechts Vaulen), who, although she looks young, is trying to appear as professional as possible and handle the whole situation by the book. The school’s principal, Jarle (Oystein Roger), is mostly concerned with covering his back and avoiding any escalation that would get him in trouble. School safeguarding lead Ajsa (Vera Veijovic) is there to back him up with policy advice, but when she keeps getting uncontrollable nose bleeds the constant interruptions to the meeting only serve to escalate the tension.

The atmosphere could be cut with a popsicle stick from the start already, with prissy, judgy-faced Sarah ready to call the cops at any second and keen to put all the blame on Elisabeth. But Elisabeth is not to be trifled with, and she defends her son vigorously, pointing out that it’s only one kid’s word against another and questioning whether or not what was said was misinterpreted.

Back and forth the bickering goes until Ullmann Tondel starts to throw strange shapes into the drama. In the press notes he talks about the influence of films by Luis Buñuel, especially The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, and that’s felt in the increasingly surreal touches, as when Elisabeth suddenly gets an uncontrollable fit of giggles — a scene that goes on uncomfortably long. While that feels closer to Buñuel’s taste for shock moves and absurdist mystery, the sequences of Elisabeth suddenly breaking into a choreographed pas de deux with the school janitor (Patrice Demoniere) and later an almost orgiastic ensemble dance with a larger cast just seem self-indulgent and silly.

Some may find themselves straining to find artistic traces here of the work of Ullmann Tondel’s grandparents, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, but millennial-generation Ullmann Tondel’s directing style feels more of a piece with contemporary Nordic cinema, with its flights of fancy and quirky humor, than the high style of his progenitors. His screenwriting here, however, feels like it’s lost its way when it tries to tidy everything up in the final scene, even if the staging strains to maintain a sense of mystery by drowning out the dialogue with thrashing rain.

Film Reviews

The Garfield Movie
Director: Mark Dindal 

Alcon Entertainment and DNEG Animation
In Theaters: 05. 24

As a kid growing up in the early ‘80s, there was little that got me giggling harder than a Garfield comic strip. While most of them don’t necessarily hold up very well as an adult, I still have a fondness for the orange tabby,  and it brings back a strong nostalgia for childhood. The Garfield Movie didn’t have to be a great film to win me over. It just had to live up to its title.

As the movie begins, we meet young Garfield as a cuddly kitten on a dark, rainy night. Garfield’s father, Vic (voiced by Samuel L Jackson, Pulp Fiction) leaves him at a shelter, promising to return. Cold, scared and hungry, Garfield waits and waits, until he sees a human, Jon Arbuckle (Nicholas Hoult, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Great) dining alone in an Italian restaurant. The two bond, and Jon adopts Garfield. Years later, Jon’s dog Odie, runs into Vic, who needs his son’s help to get him out of hot water with his vengeful ex-girlfriend, a cat named Jinx (Hannah Waddingham, Ted Lasso, The Fall Guy), who used to be in gang with Vic until a dairy heist went wrong and she was sent to the pound, while Vic escaped, leaving her behind. To settle his debt, Vic must complete the original mission: steal thousands of milk bottles from a dairy called Lactose Farms. Garfield, Vic, and Odie must infiltrate the heavily guarded location. Their only ally is Otto (Ving Rhames, Mission: Impossible), a bull who was on the face of Lactose Farms, along with the love of his life, a cow named Ethel, until they were separated. The menagerie of animals must work together, and father and son must learn to trust one another gain, if this high stakes mission is going to succeed.

It’s understandable that the makers of The Garfield Movie felt that they needed to have a plot that kept audiences engaged, and that making a good movie was more important to them than taking a purist approach to the material. The plot certainly didn’t need to be nearly this convoluted, however, and it’s shamelessly derivative of Chicken Run and is hard to escape, right down to the character design of Marge, an animal control officer voiced by Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong. In general, the design is all over the place, with Garfield, Jon, and Odie following the look established by Jim Davis, the original cartoonist, but many of the other characters look like they have just been pulled from various mismatched existing movies. If you’re going in as a fan, be prepared that for the most part, The Garfield Movie is so far from getting the basic attitude of the lead character or the simple dynamic that it feels like a peripheral connection to the source material at best. All of this would be more easily forgivable if it was a lot more entertaining, but sadly, it falls flat more often than not. There’s a certain amount of physical comedy that may appeal to kids, but the sly, cynical sarcasm of the title character has largely been neutered. The narcissistic edge is kept carefully in check, and is completely gone from his interactions with Jon and Odie, the heart of the original material. The feline villains and Vic’s past as a thief suggests that the screenwriters got Garfield and Heathcliff confused and didn’t bother to do enough research to correct the error, and very little of this plot thread works at all. The film really only succeeds on any tangible level when it’s milking the relationships between Garfield and his two dads, the absentee father Vic, and the adoptive father, Jon, for emotional warm fuzzies. The final action sequence aboard a train is fast moving and fun, if completely out of place. 

Much has been made out of the casting of Chris Pratt as Garfield, and while it’s not ideal casting, he does a capable enough job, and the shortcomings in the portrayal of the character can’t be blamed on him. Jackson is energetic as Vic, and the two try to inject some heart into the proceedings despite a lack of chemistry. Hoult is trying too hard to do a goofy cartoon voice as Jon, and while Rhames does have one of the most memorable voices in the movies, the character of Otto simply never clicked for me. The rest of the voice cast isn’t even worth mentioning, with the villain characters being so annoying and out of place that even the presence of talented voice actors couldn’t make me enjoy them.

The Garfield Movie gets some mileage out of moments of cuteness, and enough manic energy to keep kids watching, particularly in the second half. In terms of keeping parents – the ones who are more likely to be attached to Garfield as an intellectual property – engaged, this is a bit of a slog, and I’d recommend it only as a discount night family excursion, or something to wait and let the kids watch on video. –Patrick Gibbs

Read More Movie Reviews For The Kiddies:
IF
Kung Fu Panda 4 

3/5 stars

No Such Person is a rarity in Hong Kong cinema nowadays: a low-budget, purely commercial production with a no-name ensemble cast and minimal artistic flair whose producers nevertheless believe it can attract an audience with its attentive storytelling.

The film opens with a brief scene in which two people, purporting to be church officials, take over a vacant space in an old tenement building. It then jumps nine months ahead to follow young woman Amber (Kaylee Yu Hoi-ki) as she begins renting a furnished room in a property owned by Ray (Terry Zou Wenzheng), who claims to be a veterinary surgeon.

In the next scene, police are notifying the parents of a woman whose body has been found under a cliff along a hiking trail in a Hong Kong country park.

And then we’re back to learn more about those occupying the rooms next to Amber’s: Sisi (Winnie Chan Wing-nei), a live-streamer who produces sexually charged content for her audience; Ming (Himmy Wong Ting-him), a stock market speculator in deep financial trouble; and Ping (May Leong Cheok-mei), a creepy old lady who sells second-hand items on the streets.

From there, No Such Person gradually reveals the predicament of Amber, a former yoga teacher who appears to be in some emotional distress; the mystery surrounding Ray’s premises and the characters’ ulterior motives provide much of the intrigue.

Despite the film being set in a subdivided flat – a mainstay of Hong Kong social realist dramas – and having as its subject matter the prevalent social phenomenon of identity theft scams, Sun and his screenwriter Chen Hang have no ambitions beyond serving up a modest slice of B-movie entertainment.

Their film drip-feeds just enough information to keep the viewer engaged, before an escalation in the final act reveals the ungodly nature of the whole enterprise.

Even then, the visual depictions of sex and gore remain tame – which is probably more a reflection of the production’s limited scale than of a penchant for restraint on the part of Sun.

Its story is not as clever as the filmmakers intend it to be, and the sleazy nature of its revelations betrays Sun’s roots as a director and producer of erotic movies. Yet No Such Person is diverting enough for those who watch it with an open mind.

At the risk of damning it with faint praise, the film feels different from most Hong Kong productions we’re getting to see these days – and that does make No Such Person a welcome addition to the canon in spite of its many flaws.