Jeppe Rønde returns to Rotterdam with a tense interpersonal drama about a woman in a New Age religious community confronted by the secrets held by her outsider brother.
“Based on true memories,” reads the title card to Jeppe Rønde's Acts of Love, which world-premiered in IFFR’s Harbour sidebar – which might get one thinking that this film is simply just based on a true story. But the Danish filmmaker uses the movie, with a script by himself and Christopher Grøndahl, to quickly cut through our naivety, calling into question what is “true” and how well we can trust our memories, as explored through the lives of those in a New Age Christian community in rural Denmark. Rønde began with a documentary background and also ventured into fiction, starting with Bridgend ten years ago, which he also presented at Rotterdam.
Unable to have a biological child, Hanna (Cecilie Lassen) has found solace for more than seven years in a New Age Christian community that lives together in a rural collective in Denmark.
“People can come and go as they please,” one of the Greenlandic residents, Inuk (Klaus Geisler), says, rejecting any implications that it is a cult. But her life is unsettled by the arrival of her younger brother, Jakob (Jonas Holst Schmidt) – hair is falling out in patches on his head, and he responds to the commune's advertisement for a bricklayer job.
In this cryptic community governed by their leader, Kirsten (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen), peculiar habits reign: children play with invisible balls and community members take part in “mirroring sessions”, branded as a ritual to reveal, reenact and heal their unresolved traumas. Jakob maintains a deep scepticism towards Hanna’s new community – that is, until we are let into his experience at the film’s halfway point, where the non-believer is swept into something deeper. The viewer, too, uncovers darker secrets being held by both parties about their past.
Complemented by ethereal-sounding music by Sune Køter Kølster – sometimes orchestral, sometimes choral – the scenes of religious ceremony become the access point for both the characters and the audience into the intricacies of Jakob’s and Hanna’s unholy, if you will, childhood.
But even some things are too bizarre for the commune. Rønde’s work is led by a strong performance by Lassen, and the director cinematically blends past and present through scenes of ritual, with the community seemingly overtaken by the presences of those being “treated”.
However, while effectively crafted, the film’s character dynamics and backstories still feel like a set of archetypes that we’ve seen before in often-predictable narrative steps, all centred around familial trauma and abuse destined to explode in a confined environment. The grey-forward colour palette (with cinematography by Jacob Møller) emphasises the unsettling elements of the commune, where everything is made uniform by its rigid rules.
Interestingly, Acts of Love is not the only title at Rotterdam about sectarian religious communities this year, the other prominent feature being the Big Screen Competition winner Raptures, another Scandinavian entry. But Rønde’s film reveals itself to be a surprisingly conventional drama for the Harbour section, where the filmmaker’s balanced approach to its difficult and taboo content is what warrants its inclusion.
Acts of Love is a Danish production by Paloma Productions, with TrustNordisk steering its world sales.