Written and directed by Hlynur Pálmason
A vengeful giant rooster, a scarecrow/target practice dummy come to life, a man afloat in the icy waters off Iceland: the disorienting experience of a separation headed for divorce gets the surreal treatment in Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains.
A divorce is about one of the most stressful things that can happen to a home. Kramer vs. Kramer laid it bare with acrid venom, Noah Baumbach got all intelligentsia about it with The Squid and the Whale, then really got in his feelings with A Marriage Story. The Love That Remains wraps itself in the Nordic everyday and then microdoses acid while standing over the kitchen sink.
Saga Garðarsdóttir plays Anna, struggling artist and mother to tweener twins Grímur and Þorgils, and 17-year old Ída. Intent on her family’s well-being, she pursues her passions while safeguarding normalcy at home. Family dinners, activities, day trips.
Father Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason) is often away, out at sea on a commercial fishing boat, but back on shore he’s similarly adrift, uneasily trying to find his place within the family’s new reality. The affection he still has for Anna, his fear of losing his patriarchal place, his frustration with this in-between existence of his.
Pálmason’s time is spent with Anna but his thoughts are with Magnús. With Anna, we watch her work on her art, tend to the home, deal with dingus art dealers – essentially be a mom. Amidst this mundanity, (as mundane Iceland’s stunning raw beauty and the work as an artist can be) Pálmason also inserts little wacky sketches that feel siphoned from Magnús’s headspace.
As evocative and amusing these sketches are, lighting up like flares in the Icelandic mist, they make The Love That Remains Magnús’s celluloid mirror, a bit homeless and untethered from the family drama it aims to be. They are surprising and surprisingly funny, but also sudden zigs and a movie that mostly zags.
Because The Love That Remains stands out as Pálmason’s most earthbound and inviting film. His debut Vinterbrødre took an abstract approach to brotherhood, A White, White Day sank to grief, and Godland saw a perfect merger of form and function with its story about national identity combating settler colonialism set in the 1800s.
Now we’re inside, among the IKEA furniture of a working class home, in a comedy no less, and the feelings have never been more understandable and immediate, yet they don’t pierce as deep and the movie doesn’t burn as bright from within because of where Pálmason’s attentions truly lie.
The Love That Remains is still a compelling watch because of Pálmason’s sublime skill and the use he puts it to, offering a fresh take on this topic, which is an attempt at a visceral depiction of a life event that will never be a cerebral exercise. But like a father unsure of his footing, so does Pálmason lose the plot and go for the exciting distractions when home is where the heart truly is.
Mikkel Frederiksen 