Start the week with a film: ‘The Love That Remains’ is a gentle portrait of family tensions
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The parents have separated but the wife and kids are alright. Anna, a farmer and an artist, has moved on from her sailor husband Magnus, immersing herself in creating, parenting and house-keeping. Magnus is less settled, his trips out at sea a metaphor for the turbulence within him.
Icelandic director Hlynur Palmason’s The Love That Remains (2025) is anything but dramatic, at least not in a conventional way.
The movie, which can be rented on Prime Video, is not a plot-driven story that explains why Anna (Saga Garoarsdottir) and Magnus (Sverrir Guonason) are no longer together. Rather, the film unfolds as a series of asynchronous episodes in the lives of Anna, Magnus, their daughter, their twin sons and their pet dog Panda.
Palmason’s screenplay follows the family over a year, through changing seasons and incidents that are trivial as well as life-altering. The opening visual sets the tone. A crane yanks a roof off a house, exposing the bareness within. But the roof is intact and floats over the house like the giant wings of a bird.
There is rupture but continuity too within the family, which has been a single unit for far too long to simply come apart. The family members frequently reunite for dinners and picnics....