An artist grapples with the tensions of work, motherhood, and a husband who simply won't let go in the deceptively modest new film from the Icelandic director, a follow-up to "Godland."
"Separated" is a fraught and transient term in human relationships, prone to contradictory definitions by couples long inclined to conflict: a prelude to a definitive ending for one, a conciliatory pause for the other. In Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason's striking and emotionally intense marital drama "The Love That Remains," artist Anna (Saga Gardarsdottir) is ready to separate, or rather <i>be</i> separated, from her sailor husband Magnus (Sverrir Gudnason), while he stubbornly maintains his presence in the house they share with their three children, and even occasionally in her bed. It's a semblance of domestic stability that she finds increasingly less comforting.
Director: Hlynur Pálmason
Writer: Hlynur Pálmason
Stars: Panda, Saga Garðarsdóttir, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir
Veering into surrealism as ordered lives and minds unravel, Pálmason's fourth feature film is an album of intensely felt, darkly humorous, and increasingly chaotic scenes from a marriage. While quite different in form and approach from the dazzling "Godland" of 2022, the new film shares with its predecessor a subtle and ethereal visual precision, a fixation on the shifting moods of the Icelandic rural landscape, and a dry, quirky wit rooted in the perverse curiosities of human behavior. Though unlucky not to be selected for the Competition section at Cannes—it screened in the non-competitive Premiere section—it confirms Pálmason's growing stature and uniqueness as an auteur.
The canvas here is seemingly smaller than in "Godland," but its textural details are rich, the tones deep and varied. The same, without any connotation of smallness, could be said of the raw, earthy artworks created by Anna for her latest collection. After losing her studio to real estate developers—a striking opening shot shows it being dismantled from the roof down, an aptly unsettling visual metaphor—she embraces the outdoors as her new workspace, filling her sheet-sized canvases by exposing them to the elements, marking them with dirt, moisture, and rust. It's a back-to-basics approach that perhaps signals her desire for new beginnings and simpler ways of life.
Magnus, however, prefers things to stay the same, at least when he's around, given that his work on an industrial fishing trawler keeps him away from land for weeks at a time. It's clear that Anna has long shouldered most of the responsibilities of raising their three children: the teenager Ída (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir) and the younger Grímur (Grímur Hlynsson) and Þorgils (Þorgils Hlynsson), which has begun to affect Magnus's place in the family. Her commands regarding household chores or misbehavior carry more weight than his; although he sometimes stays overnight, a habit she tries to discourage so as not to confuse the children, he increasingly seems like an awkward guest in the family home.
Set over the course of a year, Pálmason's film is constructed from various vignettes of family life, both peaceful and conflict-ridden: sometimes lively, sometimes tense meals, a pleasant afternoon picnic where a casual glance at his wife's skirt sends Magnus into an erotic reverie, a frantic trip to the emergency room after an incident that is every parent's worst nightmare. There is little narrative development, though the film gains structure and rhythm from a progressively unraveling sense of reality, beginning comically when Anna, after a day spent dealing with an obnoxious and ultimately dismissive Swedish gallery owner, imagines his plane crashing.
At other times, we delve into more elaborate fantasies, culminating in extended dream sequences involving the unsettling, armored scarecrow built by the children in Anna's new outdoor studio, or the giant, vengeful rooster that haunts Magnus's subconscious. These are entertaining distractions, though "The Love That Remains" is most compelling when the line between reality and unreality blurs: a character's apparent fate could be a real event, a self-critical hallucination, or another character's deepest, darkest desire. As this seemingly simple relationship drama becomes increasingly unbalanced, it acutely suggests the quiet chaos and latent violence in "normal" homes that conceal their underlying dysfunction.
Pálmason examines this gradual breakdown with warmth and compassion for all involved, paying attention to the moments of calm or joy that emerge even amidst the emotional turmoil: the joyful, jam-stained chaos of a family project, or a relaxed evening watching David Attenborough documentaries on television after a stressful family crisis. Editor Julius Krebs Damsbo’s ingenious and angular editing evokes the sometimes aggressively polarized energies of everyday parenting, and Pálmason’s 35mm cinematography, though often soft and twilight-hued, pays attention to how shifts in weather and landscape can influence, or reflect, a character’s mood, as the film drifts away from strict realism.
Both lead actors are superb, equally irritated and irritating, fragile with neuroses that occasionally dissipate to reveal a tender vulnerability. The director’s own children, meanwhile, play their characters with a clumsy spontaneity and an eccentric, joyful spirit—a casting choice that amplifies the film’s palpable intimacy, as does the untamed and shaggy presence of the charismatic sheepdog (and Palm Dog award winner) Panda, so important that he is given his own individual credit in the end titles.
“Why do the hens let the rooster mount them like that?” the children ask with waning innocence, observing the goings-on in the chicken coop at the bottom of the garden. Later, wondering if their parents touch each other when they’re naked, they confidently conclude that they don’t, or at least not anymore. Wise, lyrical, and strange, “The Love That Remains” thrives on its profound understanding of the peculiarities of every family and the gradual disillusionment with which children view their parents as they become smaller and more imperfect with the passage of time.
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