‘The LOVE THAT REMAINS’ REVIEW: Hlynur Pálmasson Follows ‘Godland’ with a Snapshot of Marital Dissolution More Elemental than Affecting

Over Three Features Set in His Native Iceland, Hlynur Pálmason Has Establized A Distinctive Feel for The Power of Landscapes and Elemental Forces to Shape Human Relationship, Position. A Feeling as Intimate As Isalation Can Take on Epic Dimensions Under the Writer-Director’s Gaze, Notably in HIS 2022 Head-Turner Godlandan austree beauty of man vs. Nature Whose Spirituality Is Pierced by Shards of Wily Humor and Lynchian Strangness. Similar Qualities Are Evident in The love that remains (Ástin sem eftir er), Albeit on a smaller canvas of domestic breakdown.

Serving as his own dp – and chooting on 35mm in academy ratio – pálmasson’s expansive Sense of composition Remains Striking in this Drama FRUSTRATING. His unteThered Imagination Generates Images that Can Function as Visual Metaphors or Abstract Enigmas. But as the Film Evolves Into An IncreASINGly Fragmented Collage of JuxTaposted Surreal and Everyday Vignettes, Any Emotion Connection to the Characters Begins To Fade.

There’s A rich History of Screen Dramas About Unraveling Marriages that Eschew The Mawkish Tendencies of Weepie Melodrama. From Kramer Vs. Kramer to Shoot the moon; Scenes from A Marriage to Marriage Story. Asghar Farhadi’s Morally Complex and Culturally Specific A sepation is a noteworthty Standout of Recent Decades. On the Less Rewarding End of the Spectrum, Carlos Reygadas’ Our Time is a maaddingly self-indulgent slog and arguable the Director’s Least Interesting Movie.

Like that 2018 Mexican Feature, Pálmasson’s New Film Also Casts Members of His Own Family – His Three Children – Whose UnselfConsCious Sportnene A fat. Camera. The Director Has Always Been Less Interated In Plot Thran Character, Mood and Atmosphere, and this Movie’s Idiosyncratic Storytelling Goes a Long Way Town Papering Over ITS FLAWS. EVEN IF IT’S SOMETIMES OF THE CAUSE OF THEM.

It Opens with The Startling Image of A Roof Being Crumpled and Lifted Off An Empty Warehouse Building by Crane, Hovering in the Air Briefly Like A U UFO Being Swing. The Building Is The Former Studio of Visual Artist Anna (Saga GardarsDotti) and it Demolition by Developers Provides An Apt Metaphor for the Lifted Off Her World.

She works hard to Balance Her Life As a Frazzled But Caring Mother to Three Spirited Children-Teenage ída Porgils Hlynsson) – with chasing the Elusive Next Step to Gallery Representation and Wider Recognition.

Anna’s Methodology for Creating Her Paintings (Borrowed from Pálmasson’s Own Visual Arts Process) is Highly Physical, Hinting at the Herculean Strengt and Dedication Require to. Working in a Field, she arranges large ron cutut Shapes on raw canvases, weighting them down with Woodh Wood or Stones “Paint” them.

We Get Little Concrete Information About What Trigger Anna’s BreakUp with The Kids’ Facher, Magnús (Sverrir GudnaSon), Who Apps ALREADY TO LIVING SEPARATY FROMY FROMY FROMY FROM. He’s Away at Sea for Long Stretches on An Industrial Fishing Trawer Dringing Herring Season and there’s a HINT OF HIM NOT PULLING HIS WIGHT WIGHTH Parental Responsibilites.

There’s A Sense of the Uneasy Coexistence of Man and Nature in Scenes with Massive Nets Being Hauled in by A Mechanized Winch and a Silver Blur of Fish by the Hunderde AROUND Looking to get a taste of the catch.

Glimpses of Magnús Alone in his Cabin on the Boat, or his prickly interactions with insensitively prying shipmates, quetly reveal his gnawing Sense of Solitude.

Magnús Keeps Droping by the Family Home Unannounced, Staying for a Meal or Just a Beer with Anna. There’s Even Sex On Occasion, But Mosstly, Anna’s Residual Fondness for HIM is Frayed by Impatio and Annoyance. She’s Ready to Move on with Her Life While He’s Like A Claingy Puppy, Refusion To Let Go. Gudnason Plays the Awkwardness of the Scenes With Raw Feeling, in Contrast to GardarsDottiir’s More Matter-of-Fact Resilien.

WHHICH MACH Magnús Gets Testy Because the Boys Automatical Respond to Their Mother’s Chore Requests While of the Ignore His Stabs at Basic Discipline – The Like Clearing ALIKING ALIKING ALIKING ALIKING ALIKE CLEARING OF THE ATHNER OF PLADA Dishwasher – Are Poignant Illustrations of the Way Has Become An Outsider in His Former Home.

Anna’s Taxing Attempts to Make Professional Inroads Are Distilled in A String of Scenes in Wich A Swedish Gallerist (Anders Mossling) Acceptations Her Invitation To Visit. The Dreary Windbag Shows Little Interest in the Work She Has Painstapingly Hung in a New Studio Rental (“Are All The Same Color?” WHICH She Listens in Silence.

WHEN SHE SHOWS HER WORKS-INTOGRESS LAID OUT IN THE OPEN FIELD, HE’S MORE At the Beauty of the Hilltop Coastal Setting, Gasping Over The Gasier Across Across The Bay.

The Scene in Which She Drops Him at the Airport for His Return Flight Has An Acerbic Bite. He Tells Her Has No Space for Her Work and Patronizes Her With Empty Assurances that She Will Find the Right Gallery, or The Right Gallery Will Find Her. In Respons to His Joking Reference to His Mother, Anna Mutters, “Your Mother’s A Whore,” While The Dead-Eyed Look on Her Face Expresses Her Wish for His Plane to Crash.

Pálmaason and his actors tap the melancholy vein of two people drifting apart affart a Long Shared History When Anna First Lies to Magnús About the Gallerist’s Visit Being ACCCCCECCCCE Soul-Crushing Day, Venting Her Anger About the Man’s Self-Absorbed Tedioousness. But Even in Those Moments of Closiness, It’s Clear That While Magnús Wants to Go Back to the Way Things Were, that Tat Time Has Passed for Anna, Who Discoourages Him Froms. Quite Ophten, She Just Sems Exhausted by Him, Even If The Director Shows Nonjudgrimal Compassion for Both Characters.

ONEAD THAT PKOLMASON SHOT TWO YEARS EARLIER OBSERVES The SCARECROW FIGURE THAT GRIMUR AND PORGILS Assemble on the Edge of the Field Wheer MOTHERKS, GRADUALLY As the Seasons Change. They The Effigy As An Archery Target, WHICH Forehadows An Alarming Acident Late in the Film.

The Knight Also Coms to Life at One Point, Paying A Nocturnal Visit to Magnús, As Does a Monster-Size Apparition But These Fantastical Interludes-Sparked by the B&W Creature Features Magnús Falls Asleep Watching on Late-Night TV-Tend to be Opaque Rather than Illuminating.

A More Effective Blurring of the Lines Between Fantasy and Reality Is A Sequance in Whole Magnús Imagines – or Does He? – Being Adrift at Sea, Waiting to be Picked Up by a Boat to Deliver Him Back to Shore. That image of distincy, as hope reCedes, makes for a haunting closing shot.

Both Leads Are Excellent, Conveying the Weary Sadness of Separation, Underscored By Enduring Affections, and The Naturalness of the Three Children Adds Immeasurably to the Drama’s. Ingvar Sigurdsson (UnFORGETTABLE IN Godland and pálmaason’s previous film, the Searing Drama of Grief and Jealouss A white, white day) Makes A Welcome Apperance As Anna’s Warm, Down-To-Earth Dad.

There’s Much to Admire in Pálmaason’s Unconventional Approach to What Could Have Been Familiar Domestic Drama. But The Dreamlike Dtours Threaten to Overwhelm The Tender Portrait of a Family Breakup.

The Film Is MOST AFFERING IN ITS CASAL OBSERVATION-SET TO THE JAZZZ-INFLECTED MELODIES OF HARRY HUNT’S Playing piano for dad Album – of Moments like Anna and the Three Children Sprawled Across The Couch Watching TV; a reprueve from sepation tension during a family hiking and picnic day, WHEN they pick wild mushrooms and berries; The Kids Skating on a Frozen Pond; Gently Handling Fluffy, Freshly Hatched Chicks; or Playing Basketball As the Family’s Scene-Stealing Icelandic SheepDog Panda (Pálmaason’s Own Dog) Darts About Barking, Wanting To Join in.

As Imaginative as the surreal departures are, it’s the Magic of Those quotididian moments in a fractured family’s Life that Resonate most.