If Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason’s work has an general motif so far, it may very well be summed up by traces from Pleasure Division’s eponymous post-punk anthem, whose refrain merely goes, “Isolation, Isolation, Isolation”. His mise-en-scène strongly betrays that his nation’s inhabitants is just 350,000, its hills and horizons feeling untouched, and current as they seemingly had centuries in the past. Regardless of this notion’s reference to settlements and colonialism, its panorama additionally suggests a tabula rasa, bounding with potential to harness, magnificence to reap, and the potential to encourage creative creativity and love.
“Godland”, his breakout 2022 function following an unstable Danish priest establishing a brand new church on the islands, exhibited the darkest variation on these concepts, with formal ballast for acres, regardless of a surplus of solemnity, and apparent pinches from “There Will likely be Blood” and Werner Herzog. He’s been touting one other spectacularly bold film, “On Land and Sea”, however pivoted to “The Love That Stays” as a follow-up, a extra intimate mission shot piecemeal over a number of years, referencing tough occasions in his life, if stopping wanting uncooked auto-fiction.
Premiering within the non-competitive Cannes Première part at this yr’s competition, Pálmason completes a transition from maximalism to minimalism, monitoring a nuclear household considerably much like his personal because it disintegrates. His personal kids Ída, Grímur, and Þorgils are the fictional couple’s brood, with the feminine lead Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) mimicking his vocation as an artist (if with a few quarter of his worldwide renown), and her fiancé, the dumpy, but endearing Magnús (typically shortened to Maggi, and performed by Sverrir Guðnason), transport out for weeks on a herring trawler, a spot to luxuriate in photogenic vistas and calm daylight, with out promising the slightest risk of actual human intimacy. Along with her follow consisting of Anselm Kiefer-esque metallic land artwork, Anna has a disappointing go to from a Swedish gallerist, whose evaluation is “not this time”; after his mini-plane’s outbound exit, she decries him as “boring”.
Pálmason is an exacting image-maker, giving us crystalline pure panoramas that apportion their magnificence fastidiously, but his screenplays are intentionally extra fragmented, typically to their detriment. In “Godland” and his Cannes Critics’ Week calling-card “A White, White Day”, this shattered sense of trajectory spiraled into hypnotic bleakness; right here, he braids varied fragments to narrate a time-honored story of affection misplaced, but the immaculacy of the development doesn’t assist us really feel it as viscerally as he’d like. Right here, nonetheless waters run a bit shallow.
A direct limitation is that what initiated Anna and Maggi’s breakup is so imprecise. They start the movie ostensibly “collectively”, then it’s undeniably clear the latter now lives elsewhere, though their new co-parenting association sees important, and fairly bearable time spent in every others’ firm. Pálmason, capturing on 35mm in Academy ratio, loves his grasp pictures composed with roomy depth of area. Symmetry by means of recurrent objects entered within the body is frequent, with temporal match-cuts employed to take us from day to nighttime, and even daylight to surrounding snow. The 5 members of the family are scattered amidst these large compositions, with close-ups tightly rationed. On this mode, “The Love That Stays” typically looks like his try to enshrine this period of his rapid household in stopped time — a memento — like an artsy model of the iOS Photographs app slideshows that pop up in our notifications.
That analogy creates a logical segue for considering what’s progressive and forward-thinking about Pálmason’s work right here and general. Late within the movie, he chooses to transition from one picture to a different with a laptop computer browser “flip” sound impact, and it collapses inwards like for those who decrease a window on display. This feels a bit compelled and corny, and the director turns into much more outlandish depicting Maggi’s goals as their relationship feels absolutely unsalvageable: a rooster disturbs him in actual life, then visits him in large, anthropomorphized type in his dream to injure him or worse. It’s a tonal shift that almost works, resulting from its realizing sense of distinction.
If “The Love That Stays” has a kindred spirit in up to date auteur cinema, it evokes a far-less edgy and kooky model of Carlos Reygadas’ “Our Time” (certainly, the Mexican enfant horrible sits on the principle competitors jury this yr). Each experiment with learn how to misery the marital dramas of the “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Scenes from a Marriage” classic; one has 70s British prog rock and polyamory, with the opposite comparatively faltering for not exploring a extra passionate or erotic course. However Pálmason’s general sincerity has its dividends, even for what it lacks in candidness: the poignant closing shot distills that that is his imaginative and prescient on this everlasting subject, open to the danger that its alternating visible modes received’t harmonize. The love stays in Maggi’s coronary heart, however can’t embody and mix with all of the love Anna, Ída, Grímur, and Þorgils respectively have saved and in addition eradicated.
Grade: B-
“The Love That Stays” debuted within the Cannes Première part of the 2025 Cannes Movie Pageant. It’s at present in search of U.S. distribution.
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