The Love That Remains Review (KVIFF 2025)
Walking down the brick-paved streets of Karlovy Vary, I was struck by the odd poster for The Love That Remains. Planted right in the middle of the river, two siblings stand magnified, holding either end of a fish; an image strange enough to deliver the jolt of anticipation I’d been hoping for. A few hours later, the film itself satisfied my appetite.
The Love That Remains is strange and a little offbeat, but its stunning imagery and infectious rhythm allow for moments of narrative disruption and off-track playfulness, lending it a kind of whimsical drift. A play not easy to take in, especially given its core: a broken marriage and the unresolved spill of a family and its members trying to stay afloat.
With his fourth feature, Hlynur Pálmason returns to the hills of Iceland. Anna is a visual artist working with rusted metal blueprints and monumental canvases. Magnús fishes in the open sea on a trawler. Their three children—somewhere around the cusp of adolescence—are busy exploring social behavior, the edges of sexuality, and the unknowns of the future. We meet the family sometime after the emotional fallout of the separation, still stumbling through ways to remain connected under new terms. Events unfold quietly, and we mark the passing of time through the shifting landscape of glaciers and earth.
The film isn’t interested in assigning blame, which is refreshing. We get it: it’s always two to blame, and no one at once. Resolution is scarce. Only Magnús seems to carry the tragic weight of separation, from both his partner and his children. Nothing really confirms he’s at fault, but The Love That Remains slow-cooks him to the point of implosion like a pressure cooker.
We’re cooked along with him. Shot in a 4:3 ratio (not central, but worth noting), the film plays visual tricks that keep us on edge, while the editing makes sure we never settle. It’s genuinely exciting and, I dare say, new. Symbolism (naturally present) runs through the film, especially around the body, with a dedicated breakdown of testicles. But that’s not where the humor lies. Instead, it’s in the non-human characters: the Palme Dog-winning Panda, and a deranged but endearing rooster who takes over one scene so entirely it almost tips into another genre. Pálmason never lets it go full absurd, he sprinkles in just enough.
The Love That Remains might not fully deliver on the emotional scale its subject implies. It also leans heavily on the magnetic draw of landscape and the familiar (especially in cinema) narrative components provided by a fisherman and an artist. Still, it’s solid, stirring, and, frankly, cool.
The Love That Remains screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as part of the Horizons section.
★★★★
The Love That Remains / Dir: Hlynur Pálmason / Sverrir Gudnason, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Anders Mossling / Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, France / Aerofilms
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