If you try to save a loved person, is it out of love for them or love for yourself? If you truly love someone, would you let them harm themselves if it’s what they want? Can mutual love be toxic? These and many other questions guide Jeppe Rønde’s psychological drama. The events are simple, if a little sensationalist. The Danish director avoids a moralist spectacle by opting for an austere and unpretentious narrative style, informed by his documentary work.

Hanna (Cecilie Lassen, giving an intense performance) lives in a secluded fundamentalist Christian community in rural Denmark. Hanna’s young brother Jakob (Jonas Holst Schmidt) sneaks into the community as a bricklayer whose job it is to expand the main building. Old tensions immediately arise. Deeply rooted trauma crawls to the surface as the siblings meet again in this eerie environment. Dark, muddy colours make the rainy climate and soulless buildings even more forbidding.

The group is a cult. Their enigmatic leader Kirsten (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen) manipulates the followers with intrusive mind games. These sessions are called “mirroring”. Group members reenact events that others experiences in order unlock his or her secrets. The secrets Hanna and Jakob share are both twisted and painful. Hanna joined the community in order to get away from her troubled existence, it seems. Her obsessive attempts to become pregnant have a very peculiar root cause.

Repression and denial are at the core of the plot. Rønde draws the audience into the emotional turmoil of his two young protagonists. Intimate closeups scrutinise their faces as if to read their emotions. These feelings demonstrate that they have a very different attitude towards their shared past. Hanna is now devoted to God, or at least she has convinced herself she is. Visibly appalled by his sister’s indoctrination, he tests both the group’s and her limits. While Hanna implores Jakob to leave, the children play with an imaginary ball – a metaphor for Hanna’s empty beliefs.

Despite the good acting and straightforward plot, Acts of Love is a movie dogged by cliches and representation issues. Rønde’s fascination with the religious practices borders on voyeurism. Rather than questioning the nature of the “mirroring” sessions, he mysticises them. He never challenges the false and dagerous notion that reenactment of trauma heals, and that terrible memories lose their power as soon as they are shared. In fact, he seems to endorse these ideas.

Plus, the storytelling tends to lose itself. The introductory chapter is overlong, and the “mirroring” sessions become repetitive after a while. As a result, there is limited plot and character development. Rønde doesn’t seem to know where to take his characters. While Lassen and Schmidt have a strong chemistry, their relationship barely contributes towards the drama’s murky conclusion.

Acts of Love is in the Official Competition of Tiff Romania.