Although the Cannes Film Festival is probably the most prestigious film festival in the world, the film press that gathers there is not above shallow puns. The Palm Dog Award was established in 2001 to honor the best dog performance at the festival – all based on the Cannes main prize, the Palm d'Or. The range of films that have been awarded the Palm Dog so far is impressive – including Quentin Tarantino's masterstrokes “Inglourious Basterds” and “Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood”, the Oscar winner “The Artist” and the outstanding legal film “Anatomy of a Case”.
In 2025, the dog Panda, who more or less plays herself, from the breakup drama “The Love That Remains” was awarded the Palm Dog. She doesn't do much in it other than roll around cutely and wildly in one scene, but it is still one of the highlights of the latest work by Icelandic filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason. Because the director, who created a kowtow to his homeland from historical photographs in the must-see “Godland”, finds it very difficult to combine his well-known style with a new sense of humor in “The Love That Remains”.
The divided fish is just one of many, sometimes more, sometimes less successful, visual metaphors for the separation that is the focus of the film.
Not only is the paint gone, but even the corrugated iron roof: At the beginning of “The Love That Remains,” a crane, mostly hidden outside the 4:3 image, removes the roof of a small house and leaves it floating above the now damaged retreat. Both parts are still there, but no longer a unit. The same also applies to the married couple Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) and Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason):
The artist, who mainly looks after daughter Ída (Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir) and sons Grímur (Grímur Hlynsson) and Þorgils (Þorgils Hlynsson), lets herself be separated from the fisherman who has been busy at sea for weeks. Between the construction of Anna's new studio and her increased attempts to gain a foothold in the art scene, there is a sporadic rekindling of the former affection between the parents, occasional frustrations and bizarre accidents…
Very personal – and yet distant
There is a very personal element to “The Love That Remains”. Not only are Anna and Magnús' children played by Pálmason's own offspring (and have their actual names) – Anna's art is borrowed from the kind of works the director creates outside of film art. Regardless, this dry separation tragicomedy is very distant and cold. And not only because author, director and cameraman Pálmason usually sets up his 35mm camera at a clear distance from the actors (unless he shows flora and fauna in super close shots) and captures most scenes with natural light – which cold Iceland doesn't have much of.
This separation story also seems so remote because Pálmason ignores specific details. He does not show the explicit reason for the end of the relationship, since the action only begins when the separation has been decided, and the disagreements between Anna and Magnús are not discussed retroactively. However, this doesn't make this no-longer couple seem any more universal: for two people who only briefly doubt their decision in very few moments of sexual excitement, the fisherman and the artist get along pretty well together. There are no mutual spying and sabotage attempts, as are omnipresent in divorce cinema, no verbalized resentment – just the chilly residual affection suggested in the title.
Pictured below is the dog Panda, who won the Palm Dog Award at the Cannes Film Festival for her sheer presence – and actually sometimes brings the film to life.
However, Pálmason is hardly able to express this with his meticulously threaded, usually static shots of untouched, cool nature: In terms of staging, “The Love That Remains” communicates, contrary to the narrative, more of a total marriage breakdown – especially because allegorical or surreal separation crowbar metaphors like the one in the film appear with increasing frequency among the naturalistic vignettes opening, torn apart house or a (well-tricked) nightmare about an attacking giant rooster.
Far more convincing than these beautifully filmed but very labored dream logic inserts is the consistency with which Pálmason uses the element of time: Anna creates images from rust imprints during the year of separation, Magnús loses all sense of time on the high seas, and time-lapse recordings of a knight scarecrow, which also serves as a target, show the changes in light and weather on Iceland's coast clearly. Down-to-earth film poetry that has to fight against more banal moments of comedy – for example when the children listen to brutal true crime podcasts, speculate about their parents' sex lives in Til Schweiger comedy style or Ída doesn't say anything good about Anna to her father.
At least the dog doesn't disappoint
Pálmason's balance of dry, whimsical humor and artful, distant thoughtfulness is best reflected in a short episode about a shooting practice accident: the children are actually only allowed to shoot bows and arrows in the presence of Magnús, but because he is almost never there, their inhibitions fall. This ultimately leads to an overwhelmed Anna having to look after one of her boys, who is in unreal total shock after a shooting accident – which is staged with a brittle, comical effect. And, yes: When Panda demonstrates more vitality in a short bout of scurrying around than the rest of the film put together, it burns itself into the memory thanks to its high fluffiness factor. However, this arbitrary assessment of a separation remains a bitter disappointment.
Conclusion: “Godland” director Hlynur Pálmason never wanted to be this funny – but his dry, whimsical wit and his thoughtful, otherworldly aesthetic don't come together. In another separation film, this might be a comment on the main characters who are at odds, but in “The Love That Remains” this discrepancy glides past the calm, divorcing couple.
We saw “The Love That Remains” at the Cologne Film Festival.