Australia Coach Bert van Marwijk was adamant that a penalty should not have been awarded. Several of his players also expressed skepticism.

“Personally, I don’t think I’m a fan of it, to be honest,” Mathew Ryan, the Australian goalkeeper, said of V.A.R. “Us, as players, if we make a mistake on the pitch, we don’t get to stop the play and rewind it to correct it or whatnot. The officials do now, and obviously it was brought in to avoid calamitous errors and those sorts of things, and obviously there’s a bit of a gray area to what the referee decides and on it being conclusive.

“Now I’ve got to question what the definition of conclusive is. Because I don’t think the penalty decision was conclusive enough to overturn.”

France’s coach, Didier Deschamps, was understandably more sanguine.

“I am not going to complain with the use of video today because it was in our favor, obviously,” he said. “In our friendlies, we’ve already had situations when it was not in our favor. This is the way it is. We’ve been warned that in some situations, V.A.R. can be used.”

Whatever the gray areas, France’s lead did not last long: Less than four minutes later, Samuel Umtiti, its sturdy central defender, inadvertently touched an Australian cross with his extended right hand.

After a slight delay — just long enough for observers to wonder if Cunha had heard from Moscow about the handball, which was clear but difficult to discern as it barely affected the ball’s trajectory — he awarded another penalty. This time, he did not bother to make a trip to the sideline. Under FIFA’s rules, the on-field referee has the final word on all V.A.R. reviews, but also has the option of simply accepting the word of the V.A.R. official, who has immediate access to television replays. It was unclear, however, if that happened in this case.

The Australia captain, Mile Jedinak, who was impossible to miss on the field with his long salt-and-pepper beard, did not waste the opportunity, converting the penalty with a fast-rolling shot as goalkeeper Hugo Lloris dived to his right.