Renate Reinsve won Best Actress at Cannes three years ago for her luminous, star-is-born lead turn in Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person in the World,” which charted four tumultuous years in the life of a charming, indecisive young woman in Oslo. Reinsve’s return to the festival this year with “Armand” serves as an ominous, oppressively claustrophobic counterweight to all that film’s swooningly romantic potential energy. The feature directorial debut of Halfdan Olav Ullmann Tøndel, notably the grandson of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, “Armand” provides the actress with another showcase for her uniquely arresting presence but within the body of a chilly psychodrama that, set entirely across one suffocatingly hot afternoon at an empty elementary school, is turning its screws on her from the start. Summoned by school staff to discuss recent misbehavior by Armand, her six-year-old son, Elisabeth (Reinsve) is blindsided by allegations levied by… the parents of a classmate who claims to have been victimized by Armand. – RogerEbert.com

“Unsurprisingly, Reinsve is the standout at the center of it all…it’s a mesmerizing, undefinable performance.” – Awards Watch