The Love That Remains

Long summer days give way to longer winter nights, snow falls and melts, a marriage waxes and wanes. Charting a year in the life of an Icelandic family — separated parents Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason), their three children (all played by the director’s own kiddos), and an adorable sheepdog named Panda — Hlynur Pálmason’s filial drama has both a warm heart and the dark undertones we’ve long associated with Nordic cinema.

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It’s also quite funny, albeit in the wry, occasionally sardonic way that most movies from this uniquely cinematic corner of the world are, not to mention increasingly surreal. Homespun wisdom comes in the form of observations like “life is nothing but a fucking hassle, but animals bring us joy,” which you don’t have to be Scandinavian agree with, and a through-line about male aggression vis-à-vis hens and roosters leads to an unforgettable sequence in which a massive rooster invades the family home. Whether such moments are meant to be “real” in the strictest sense of the word is ultimately less important than their cumulative effect on the film’s pleasingly oddball atmosphere.

This isn’t the volcanic, otherworldly Iceland used as a backdrop in sci-fi movies like Prometheus and Interstellar but the idyllic countryside more often seen in domestic productions. It’s still striking in its own modest way, and anyone who’s dreamt of visiting the remote island nation will only be more motivated to start saving for a flight. In addition to writing and directing, Pálmason also shot The Love That Remains himself on 35 mm. There’s a vintage, almost home-movie quality to his crisp images, which feel nostalgic despite the film being set in the present. You can feel the family’s collective memories forming in real time, with the two brothers bickering about this or that in the backseat and the parents navigating their continued physical connection even as their emotional bond grows ever more frayed.

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Anna, an artist who’s neither starving nor thriving, frequently works outdoors; “Maggi,” as she calls her not-quite-estranged husband, is a fisherman whose work takes him to the sea for several weeks at a time. Not all is well in their relationship despite their best efforts at co-parenting, a dynamic encapsulated by a stinging line Anna delivers after a minor argument at the dinner table turns into something more heated: “Everything is easier and more fun when you’re not around.” Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can live with them.

You can feel the family’s collective memories forming in real time.

Pálmason most recently directed 2022’s Godland, a period piece about a Danish priest on an ill-advised quest to bring the good word to Iceland. This is a change of pace for him, but not a total departure: The Love That Remains is similarly concerned with how people relate to the actual land of Iceland, which is harsh and beautiful all at once. Anna’s outdoor workspace isn’t entirely by choice, as the arresting, thematically rich first scene shows the roof being pulled off her former studio space after developers take it over, but she does take to it well — especially when followed by Panda, a natural screen presence who deservedly won the Palm Dog at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The human performances are uniformly solid and authentic, but Panda stands out as a very good boy.

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A family is a greenhouse, one of Maggi’s colleagues tells him, full of plants that need to be watered, repotted, and otherwise nurtured. Put differently, family is a verb, not just a noun, and those that thrive are the ones that actively take care of one another. Some soil is better suited to that task than others, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep planting seeds.