The Love That Remains
Arriving from Cannes to Helsinki, this breakup story tenderly explores the complex web of family, love, and shared memories.
Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, The Love That Remains is a poetic and gentle exploration into the ordinary days of one Icelandic family that tries to navigate through the subtle changes of the parents’ divorce and co-parenting. The film dives into the fisher father’s and the artist mother’s new lives gently and realistically, until a huge rooster and a scarecrow come to haunt them as dreamy symbols.
In the films of the award-winning Hlynur Pálmason (Godland, R&A 2022), Icelandic nature becomes one of the protagonists. The cinematic poem, set around the changing of the seasons, moves forward like a living collage: broad Icelandic landscapes become emotional counterpoints to different details and textures, rusty works of art and flowing waterfalls of herrings.
Instead of offering clean solutions, the film is a beautifully subtle dramedy and a thoughtful investigation of what remains when love changes. It lingers on the ambiguities, inviting the audience to feel the characters’ diverse feelings that flow like the tide.
Otto Kylmälä (translated by Vilja Hynynen)
Trailer
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