The Love That Remains

Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason) is a fisherman living in the southeast of Iceland, where he spends long stretches out at sea, unable to see his kids. Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) is a visual artist who makes large, unconventional canvases. Once a family under the same roof, the couple are now separated, leaving Anna to raise their three children (and sheepdog, Panda). She does so with a gentle hand, alternately indulging and rebuffing Magnús’s attempts to reconnect, and as the seasons pass, their emotions ebb and flow.

Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s accomplished fourth feature is no Scenes from a Marriage; forgoing dramatic recriminations, he tells the story of a relationship through oblique montage sequences, humorous episodes, quasi-essayistic passages, and even a few surrealistic flourishes. Filled with magisterial natural vistas and featuring some of the most invigorating editing rhythms of any film this year, this is the rare work that remains unpredictable throughout. Following Godland and A White, White Day, Pálmason again takes a familiar premise into unexpected and original territory.

Wise and lyrical and strange… Pálmason’s fourth feature is an album of achingly felt, morbidly funny and increasingly haywire scenes from a marriage.

Guy Lodge, Variety

The Love That Remains is a floating catharsis of love and loss that carries its audience like a cloud carries angels.

Luke Hicks, The Film Stage