Though set entirely inside the confines of a rambling Norwegian elementary school building on the eve of the summer holidays, and primarily concerning an “incident” between two students, “Armand” is notably lacking children. As with this year’s German-language Oscar nominee “The Teacher’s Lounge,” “Armand” confronts, albeit indirectly, the truth that children are the soil in which moral panics take root. …
Nothing can describe the modern generation more aptly than what the Cannes Film Festival Competition French title, Wild Diamond, purports to. Living with her mother and kid sister at Frejus in southern France, her entire waking hours are geared towards climbing the social ladder through what I would call superficial sites like TikTok and Instagram. Success strikes Liane eventually, and …
