London Film Festival 2025 – The Love That Remains ★★★★★

Released: TBC (London Film Festival)

Director: Hylnur Pálmason

Starring: Saga Garðarsdóttir, Sverrir Gudnason, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Ingvar
Sigurdsson, Grímur Hlynsson, Þorgils Hlynsson & Panda

Hylnur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains is a majestic, tender distillment of a year in the life of a family navigating divorce. Pálmason, the directorial virtuoso behind A White, White Day and Godland, has always had a delicate understanding of familial dynamics, friendship, love and despair. The Love That Remains is a harmonious capturing of Pálmason’s sensibilities, tied up in an utterly beautiful family tragedy.

We open, observing from the corner of the room, with the roof of a house being detached in the Icelandic sun. Light bleeds in, but the foundations are breaking. Pálmason then holds on this magnificent piece of imagery before cutting to the monumental Saga Garðarsdóttir, Anna, a mother of three and earthly artist who is not only saying her farewells to her old workspace, but her entire existence is taking another shape. Sverrir Gudnason, Magnús, the father of three, works in a multidisciplinary role that includes deep-sea, blue-water fishing and the safe, ousting of old bombs. The magnificent, Ída, Grímur, and Þorgils are the beautifully cheeky children of Anna and Magnús, with the family dog Panda, an expressive and
incredible performer, tying them all together.

Pálmason shoots the domestic space so intricately and effectively, melding stillness and motion in typical Pálmason style. His formal dexterity is unquestionable, leading as Director of Photography for the first time since his short-film Nest, his work is simply essential. There is not an audiovisual artist on the planet presenting the passing of time as concisely and exquisitely as him. In the case of The Love That Remains, Anna’s outdoor workspace sits on the end of their island, here the family have a wooden pole in the ground that they’ve tied up a knight-in-armour. We see this knight stand through all the seasons, one of the film’s ridiculously beautiful motifs. Yet here, there’s much more than a standing ever rustier knight, Pálmason is playing with metaphor, magical realism and visual expression.

Other mesmerising section involve split-screen celluloid home video, the life of a rooster, angling and mushrooms. These astonishing images are accompanied by H Hunt’s entirely magnificent composition, melding into what is the most gorgeous audiovisual experience this year, thus far. It’s hard to quantify
how undeniably ingenious The Love That Remains is in both a holistic and formal capacity, echoing the transcendental Occupied City last year.

Despite being a film about separation, and goodness me is it, The Love That Remains balances that emotional exhaustion with presentations of on-screen love and familial love that will stay with me for a lifetime. In the case of Anna and Magnús, Pálmason blends inate infatuation, sexual desire and intimacy with this almost haptic presentation of love. One of the films forever images is Anna standing over Magnús’s face, wearing a yellow-skirt, knowing exactly where he’ll end up looking. Pálmason continues this glowing sense of delicate, sensitive tenderness with his presentation of familial love, with what might be, my favourite audiovisual moment of the year — the family walk.

As suggested earlier, it’s truly quite difficult to summarise The Love That Remains. An unbelievable piece of collaborative work, Pálmason is constantly engendering emotions within me, glacially embracing his audience members through those feelings. Whether its out within the ocean blue, carving mushrooms, watching time pass or Panda the dog potter about. The Love That Remains is so gracefully put together, that it’s quite difficult to see anything touching it this year, cementing Hylnur Pálmason as one of the greatest living artists.