The Love That Remains (Preview)
Reviewed by Ciara Moloney

Produced by Rémi Burah, Katrin Pors, and Anton Máni Svansson; directed by Hlynur Pálmason; screenplay by Hlynur Pálmason; cinematography by Hlynur Pálmason; edited by Julius Krebs Damsbo; production design by Frosti Fridriksson; music by Harry Hunt; starring Saga Garðarsdóttir, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, and Sverrir Guðnason. Color, 109 min., English dialogue plus Icelandic, Swedish, and French dialogue with English subtitles, 2025. A Janus Films release.

When I saw director Hlynur Pálmason’s debut feature Winter Brothers (2017) at a film festival many years ago, I immediately registered him as a unique talent. The subtly surreal tale of two Danish limestone miners, Winter Brothers is a film in which I raced to read the subtitles as fast as I could so I wouldn’t have to peel my eyes away from the center of the frame. Pálmason has a gift for composing strange, beautiful shots—no doubt influenced by his background as a photographer and visual artist—but he also writes offbeat dialogue and creates rich characters to go along with it. Pálmason’s subsequent films—A White, White Day (2019) and Godland (2022), both shot in his native Iceland after a decade living in Denmark—have only confirmed my initial impression. He is the all-too-overlooked visual poet of masculine isolation and dreamy enigmas in the Northwestern corners of Europe.

His latest film, The Love That Remains, is a departure. This is Pálmason’s first film to be billed as a comedy, but that is less a reflection of laughs-per-minute (it is not his funniest film) than of overall tone. The Love That Remains is tender and episodic, a resolutely undramatic slice of life. It’s the kind of film that is classed as a comedy, or comedy-drama, less because it’s funny than because it’s small and light and gentle. Saga Garðarsdóttir stars as Anna, an artist and mother in rural Iceland balancing making and selling her art with raising her three children (and some chickens). She is recently divorced from Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason), who works on an industrial fishing vessel. We never find out why they split up—as if there were a single “why” to discover—but it’s clear that Magnús (aka Maggi) wants to get back together. He feels isolated from his family now that he’s no longer at home and awkwardly attempts to assert his role as husband and father. He seems to have not fully grasped the sea change that has taken place: when a crewmate asks what he’s going to do for Christmas, he instinctively answers that he will be at home with his family and becomes aggressive when it’s pointed out that he and his wife aren’t together anymore. For her part, Anna has flashes of frustration and resentment—or even hatred—toward Maggi. Her charismatic sheepdog Panda (a canine character who won the “Palm Dog” award at Cannes in 2025) often seems more like a co-parent than her ex-husband does. But even though Anna doesn’t love Maggi anymore, having loved him for so long leaves its trace.

When I think of Pálmason’s films, I think of whites so stark that they feel desolate. But The Love That Remains vividly captures the Icelandic landscape in all colors of the seasons: wintry whites, autumnal browns, grassy greens that are cool in springtime but rich and warm in the summer. It’s a story about marriage and divorce, but without the fighting, emotional outbursts, and courtroom theatrics of Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) or Marriage Story (2019). That makes it more likely to frustrate or alienate audiences and gives the actors less material to craft a star turn. But it makes for a sweetly low-key family drama of a kind rarely represented when featuring divorced parents. When they go berry picking and mushroom foraging on a nice summer’s day, you could mistake them for a happy family. During a picnic, Anna ties elastic bands around her face to distort her features and asks Maggi and their kids if they would still love her if she looked like that. The kids, hilariously, say no. Maggi—unhesitatingly but easily, with neither self-consciousness nor desperation—answers, “Yes, of course.” There is no charged undercurrent to this scene. That they love each other is simple and obvious. It doesn’t change that they are not together and will never be again…

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Ciara Moloney, a film critic based in Dublin, is chief film critic for Current Affairs and has also written for MUBI Notebook, Fangoria, and Paste.

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Cineaste, Vol. LI, No. 3