r The Love That Remains
Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, 2025o
Magnús is a fisherman and is often out at sea for weeks on end. Anna is an artist and hopes to exhibit her work in a gallery soon. The two of them have recently split up. He has moved out. She has stayed in the remote house near the Icelandic coast, together with their children and the family dog. Yet Anna and Magnús can’t really manage to separate their lives. Is it just for the children’s sake?
Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (A White, White Day) has established himself as a major voice in European arthouse cinema with films that explore universal themes such as love, death and loneliness through the landscapes and faces of his native country. In his new film, a series of vignettes introduces us to an Icelandic family: a recently separated couple, their elder daughter and their twins. She is an artist waiting for recognition; he is a fisherman starved of affection. The children are doing fine.
A skilled portraitist, Pálmason captures the tensions that surface at a family dinner or over drinks with colleagues. A subtle observer of human nature, he allows tenderness and irritation to coexist in his characters. His directorial flair is evident in the way he sets their individual stories against magnificent landscapes without ever losing sight of humour — as in the brief appearance of a Swedish gallery owner of legendary self-importance. And in the family’s sixth member, he has created one of the most endearing canine characters seen on screen in recent years.
The few fantastical interludes scattered throughout the film are somewhat less convincing. In dreamlike visions, the father, increasingly lonely and desperate, is haunted by a giant chicken and a medieval suit of armour. Evocative as these phantasmagorias may be, were they really necessary?
No matter: one’s affection for Pálmason’s fourth feature soon reasserts itself. It is hard not to surrender to a cinema that intoxicatingly combines pain and tenderness.
Émilien Gür