Jeppe Rønde’s psychological family drama explores shared trauma and repression
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 go too far? These questions guide Jeppe Rønde’s delicate psychological portrait, and there are more, equally profound questions entwined in its story. The events themselves are simple and easily associated with sensationalism. But the director-writer’s naturalistic images and unpretentious narrative style, informed by his documentary work, escape moralist spectacle. Hanna (Cecilie Lassen, giving an intense performance) lives secluded in a fundamentalist Christian community in rural Denmark. As her younger brother Jakob (Jonas Holst Schmidt) wiles his way back into her life, old tensions arise.
Deeply buried trauma crawls to the surface as the siblings meet again in their eerie surroundings. A dark, muddy color palette makes the rainy climate and frugal buildings seem colder and more forbidding. The commune is clearly a cult whose enigmatic leader, Kirsten (Ann Eleonora Jørgensen), manipulates her followers with intrusive mind games. These sessions are called “mirroring”. Group members imitate events from the life of the person who is “mirrored” to unlock his or her secrets. The secrets Hanna and Jakob share are both twisted and painful. Apparently, Hanna only joined the commune to get away from her old life. Similarly, her obsessive, joyless attempts to become pregnant seem a method to erase or overwrite specific experiences.
Repression and denial are at the core of the minimalistic plot. Rønde draws the audience into the emotional turmoil of his two young protagonists. Intimate closeups scrutinize their faces as if to read their emotions. Their contentious feelings are also an analogy for their differing attitudes towards their shared past. Hanna is now devoted to God, or at least she has convinced herself she is. Jakob sneaked into the community as a bricklayer whose job it is to expand the main building. Visibly appalled by his sister’s indoctrination, he tests both the group’s and her limits. His tactic is creatively illustrated by a key scene. While Hanna implores Jakob to leave, the kids play with an imaginary ball.
The invisible ball becomes a metaphor for Hanna’s faux beliefs. As the kids kick it over to him, Jakob pretends to throw it far away. He only succeeded in spoiling their game. By interacting with the imaginary ball, he unwittingly shared their delusion. This pattern repeats itself as Jakob considers the group’s abusive rituals. Rønde’s fascination with these practices borders on voyeurism. Rather than questioning the nature of these amateur psychology sessions, he mystifies them. The reenactment of trauma is supposed to heal. However, this cliché – reenforced in countless psychological dramas – that terrible memories lose their power as soon as they are shared, is false and dangerous.
This misguided idealization, framed in long, mesmerized takes, also distracts from a more relevant moralistic issue. The plot tends to lose itself. First, in an overly long introductory chapter, then in constant repetition of mirroring sessions and the siblings’ arguments. Just like the storyline, these arguments don’t go anywhere. While the scenario itself manages to keep some of its impact, there’s hardly any credible development. Rønde doesn’t seem to know where to take his characters. The strongest features of his work are the dreary atmosphere, filled with brooding tension, and the action. Lassen and Schmidt evoke a palpable chemistry that speaks more about their complicated bond than the drama’s murky conclusion.
- OT: Kærlighedens Gerninger
- Director: Jeppe Rønde
- Year: 2025
