notjustaboutsex

Armand, the film creation by Scandinavian film royalty Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann’s grandson of Halfdan Ullmann Tondel is uncomfortable but offers up a feast of realizations about our lives

Elizabeth, played by the risk-taking actress Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person In the World),  finds herself confronting the school board of her six-year-old son. What could such a young boy do to warrant the condemnation from the parents of another boy, his friend, and why do the principal educators though uncomfortable, still feel its their duty to accuse. The victim’s parents are at first patent with Elizabeth’s shocked response to the accusation. They are all from the same community and have history; so why would this sensitive issue be put in such a formal setting? This is where the real mystery begins.

Small towns have secrets and judgments and memories of its citizens that go back to their own student days. Elizabeth’s husband is recently deceased and the judging teachers at first want to be sensitive with her because of the loss, but Elizabeth is out there emotionally and doesn’t fall into the shaming that the system seems to need to put on her. Much is made of her laughing scene which for me was a bit long…but everything else she does is so beautifully strange and at same time, familiar, as if we are watching her and ourselves in our private spaces. She reveals herself through public through outbursts, and dancing…she is beautiful and they all want to judge her and it seems also be her or be with her. As an audience we want to condemn the condemners for their inability to probe themselves and project their fears and insecurities on the single woman… the societal witch, who is bursting with real life.

There is much to explore in an educational documentary on what is normal child play…here though we see adults acting like they did in their own childhoods, gossiping, having nosebleeds and wanting to avert responsibility.

I spoke briefly to the director wondering if he had seen the film Suddenly Last Summer, where Tennessee William”s character, Sebastian Venable, played by Julian Ugarte, is seemingly cannibalized by a culture that need pieces of him for themselves. Elizabeth’s world is like that. As the town’s actress, she serves as the vessel for all their unrequited impulses and we see how dangerous non actualization can be. Only when the truth is revealed, and the ‘children’ re draw the lines on the playground, do we experience the tension leaving our own bodies. The rain purifies and she, with Buddhist equanimity, moves on.

The director who has worked in an elementary school has much talent for showing the everyday intimate responses that is part of the human experience. He’s got the genes for it.