'The Love That Remain' finds the magic in heartbreak | NYFF review
NYFF 2025 | Hlynur Pálmason’s "The Love That Remains" finds the humor in heartbreak in this delightful surreal divorce dramedy.
It may not seem like it, but there is something deeply funny about watching a marriage die.
Not funny in the Marriage Story sense, which premiered at my first New York Film Festival in 2019, where feelings are externalized in biting, sarcastic, and increasingly personal arguments. Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains, which made its U.S. premiere at this year’s NYFF, finds the comedy in something much stranger: the awkward, mundane, occasionally ridiculous period after the big breakup, when nobody quite knows what they’re supposed to do with all the love that’s still in the air. Pálmason leaves hints for it in every corner of the movie, both literally and figuratively.
Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason) are separated. They have three kids, a dog named Panda, and enough emotional baggage to fill the vast ocean that surrounds their little slice of Iceland. Magnús spends much of his time at sea while Anna tries to find herself through her art, and the two continue orbiting one another as parents, friends, exes, and whatever weird category exists for two people who used to share a bed and now have to figure out who gets the house.
Pálmason turns this painfully recognizable situation into something wonderfully bizarre. A medieval knight appears in the children’s games. A plane crashes into the ocean in a bit of irony. A gigantic rooster shows up like some kind of poultry-based manifestation of male rage. None of it is explained particularly well, because why would it be? This is a movie about grief, and grief doesn’t always make sense.
The surrealism gives physical form to the emotions its characters can’t quite articulate. Magnús is lonely. Anna is frustrated. Their children are trying to understand why the family they knew is changing. And underneath all of it is the realization that ending a relationship doesn’t necessarily end the relationship. You can stop being married to someone and still love them. You can resent them and miss them. You can want them gone and still want them to come home.
That’s what makes The Love That Remains so quietly devastating. It understands that heartbreak isn’t always explosive. Sometimes it’s doing the dishes. Sometimes it’s watching your ex move on. Sometimes it’s standing in a beautiful Icelandic landscape and realizing that the world dares to keep being beautiful while your life is falling apart.
Pálmason shoots all of this in gorgeous 35mm, letting the seasons pass while his characters remain suspended between what they were and whatever they’re becoming. The result is melancholy, hilarious, strange, and unexpectedly tender, much like the way Kelly Reichardt sees the world. Because maybe love doesn’t disappear when a relationship ends. Maybe that’s the problem.
The Love that Remains is playing at the 2025 New York Film Festival. Get information about screenings here.