The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er)

 

Director Hlynur Pálmason

Pálmason and his three children

The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er)               B+                                                         Iceland  (109 mi)  2025  d: Hlynur Pálmason

Returning to the wilderness of his native East Iceland after years in Denmark, writer/director/cinematographer Hlynur Pálmason lives in a house on the outskirts of Höfn í Hornafirði without a single neighbor (Höfn í Hornafirði | The Majestic Town in South Iceland), just next door to Europe’s biggest glacier, Vatnajökull, barely ever using his phone or going on the Internet.  One of cinema’s most singular contemporary artists, perhaps even Iceland’s greatest filmmaker ever, Pálmason has crafted a stunning family drama shot on 35mm that features his own three kids as the children, entrusting them with extensive scenes on their own, yet what stands out is the immense naturalness of the forboding Icelandic landscape mixed with the weirdness of the imagination, accentuated by an evocative old-school sounding piano that turns out to be a jazzy dulcet piano score by Harry Hunt from his 2015 Playing Piano for Dad album, Journeys YouTube (4:04), sounding effortless, becoming an intimate and at times surreal portrait of a fractured marriage.  In what was once a loving couple, industrial herring trawler Magnús (Sverrir Guðnason, an Icelandic-born Swedish actor in his first Icelandic-language part since childhood) and his wife Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir) have now split up, though still share family meals and spend time together for the sake of the children, moody older teenage sister Ída and the more carefree twin boys Þorgils and Grímur, always accompanied by their ever-faithful Icelandic sheepdog Panda (Pálmason’s own dog), who provides one of the best dog performances ever captured on celluloid, winning the Palme Dog at Cannes.  Absence is a silent killer, as we never witness the break-up of the relationship, only its aftermath of silent suffocation, though the marriage may have been strained by his long trips at sea, where they have to balance the times he’s home and the time he’s away, with Anna convinced she’s better off without him, as then there is no one challenging her independence, which in Iceland is a special spirit that is unlike anywhere else.  With an immaculate sense of framing and pacing, and a heavy dose of humor, creating a space as strange as it is charming, lurking somewhere between Scandanavian filmmakers Ruben Östlund and Roy Andersson, the massiveness of the land commands our attention, as the family is often seen traipsing around the countryside, going on hikes, or just generally having fun and goofing off, where part of the beauty of the film is capturing the casualness and spontaneity of everyday moments in their lives and how they remain connected to the land and sea around them.  Offering a most vivid photograph of the emotions and dynamics that fluctuate under the monotony of the ordinary, inspired by impressionist artists like Sally Mann or Claude Monet, people who return again and again to what’s nearby, the film fully evokes the mantra “Work with what’s around me.”  She is a struggling artist who prefers to work outdoors, an abstract visual artist who works with time and deterioration, allowing her coarse rust prints to be exposed to the elements, whose vast and impressive works that take months to create are not appreciated, yet viewers can decide for themselves what they think, as her working methods blend into the harshness of the surrounding terrain, creating these huge canvases that are a reflection of the ever-shifting Icelandic landscape, time consuming and not easy to make, yet at the core they also reflect her inner spirit, vibrant and rebellious, standing out from the rest as an ode to a free spirit.

Strange and a little offbeat, where its infectious rhythm and narrative disruption creates an off-the-beaten-track playfulness, lending a whimsical air that certainly lightens an otherwise heavy subject matter, standing in stark contrast to the gut-wrenching despair of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) (1973).  Initially screening in the Cannes Premiere section, this is a departure from the epic scope of his earlier film GODLAND (2022), which won the Best Feature Film at the Chicago Film Festival that year, as this is a smaller, more contained film, more immersed in nature, accentuating what unites us and divides us, revealing the minor and major mistakes, and the confusions of an Icelandic family, including heartbrteak, miscommunication, and conflicting feelings about what constitutes family.  Exploring the times we live in, the director seems more fascinated in the small and tender moments we share, creating a film that is built from an observational perspective, capturing each nuance of the daily life of the characters, yet he’s not afraid to veer into dreamy surrealistic aspects that are absurdly funny, offering an impressionistic editing style, with a few extra-inconspicuous jumpcuts, feeling intimate and autobiographical, yet it’s an imaginary narrative.  A dark existential heaviness that might otherwise envelop some scenes is bypassed in a very playful way, which might also be related to the remoteness of the coastal town, where time is conceivably decelerated and life here follows a different rhythm.  One thing that stands out is how the kids and the dog run free, with as little supervision as possible, leaving awkward moments with their father who attempts to assert his authority to no avail, as they pretty much ignore him and do what they want, where the vast outdoors is their playground, making this feel like an extremely personal film, much like his earlier short film NEST (Hreiður) (2022), Гнездо / Nest / Hreiður (2022) dir. Hlynur Pálmason [1080p ... YouTube (22:23), where the entire film is a fixed shot from a single location, as these films feature his own kids.  While the short film shows them constructing a treehouse mostly out of sight of any adult presence, where their parents are referred to, but remain mostly offscreen, this film shows them constructing the figure of a knight hanging on a post, which resembles a scarecrow flapping in the wind, with the kids playfully shooting arrows at it, but the image changes over time and during the changing seasons, suggesting the passage of time.  However the relationship between the separated parents feels authentic, with the husband off at sea where he has to contend with vulgar, profanity-laden conversations of other men continually prying into his business, describing his relationship as “I know her and I don’t know her,” while the wife attempts to get recognition for her artwork, but the Swedish gallery owner (Anders Mossling) she meets isn’t really interested and seems more concerned with consuming local food and wine, whose offhanded remark “You’re finally single” does not go unnoticed (nor does his hilarious exit), yet it’s important to note that the interiority of her work is a product and consequence of the outside world, and cannot be fully understood if not seen in that contextual relationship.  Nonetheless, she strives to make sense of the world through her art and in raising her family, where the daily struggles of life become her personal challenge.  This revolving scenario between the lead characters constitutes the film, offering an existential internalized view of their lives, where it’s easy to get distanced and alienated from a shared journey they never expected. 

Ambitious and ambiguous at the same time, what stands out in the adult husband and wife relationship is the fragility of the experience, as both are impacted by the separation, though in different ways.  Each has their own life to lead, pursuing different careers, which entails something completely different from their partner’s experience, yet they share three kids, who still view their absent father as their Dad, and expect to see him regularly, with frequent absences, but they can live with that.  Their mother is a much less hands-on parent, allowing them plenty of freedom, where it’s hard to find anything that constitutes out of bounds, so they show a surprising resiliency, where it all feels normal after a while.  The life of an artist revolves around her work (actually the director’s own art that has been exhibited internationally), which in her case is extremely physical, requiring great dedication and effort, yet she appears driven by her own conceptionary approach, where each project is extremely well thought out, becoming a metaphor for what happens to corroding love over time.  The filmmaker takes no sides, and allows each their own complexities, which is matched by the unique intensity of the free-flowing imagery which is simply not like anything else we’ve seen, as it can be abstract, but also in-your-face, as the idiosyncratic endeavors never detract from the central emotional authenticity.  Without providing any easy answers, it’s important to understand that each has their own distinct personality, as does the nation of Iceland, which holds individuality in high esteem.  The on-again and off-again relationship of the parents feels genuine, as there are moments of tenderness and love, while also their partner can send them into a rage of anger and disgust, where the last thing they need is a sudden, unexpected visit to alter the ordinary rhythms of their lives.  This is typified in an early scene where Magnús shows up unexpectedly at her door, where she initially feels perturbed, but they share a long-held connection to what was once a family, and still is, just not the same, a little broken, leaving them each wounded and internally devastated, left adrift, but they share an unconditional love for their kids, The Love That Remains new clip official from Cannes Film ... YouTube (2:05). While there's a familiarity of a long-held love, there’s also a faint chance of reconciliation, where in one truly extraordinary scene, one of Magnús’s shipmates tells him he should be willing to do anything to save his family, likening it to a greenhouse, where you often have to repair and install new windows to keep the plants inside safe, constantly tending to them and removing the weeds.  But easily the best thing this film offers is the harmonious blend into that massive landscape, with beautiful sequences of Icelandic horses, perfectly accompanied by that pensive music, where the family romps into the great outdoors offer a supreme source of pleasure, where what’s especially impressive is the way the filmmaker weaves it all together, The Love That Remains new clip official from Cannes Film ... YouTube (1:22), delivering a poignant look at the essence of faded love and shared memories amidst the changing seasons, accentuated by that lovely piano score, raw and simple, like the Bo Harwood piano music heard as the parents tenderly tuck their children to bed at the end of John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which feels like a summation of everything that came before.

36 Fillette

 

Writer/director Catherine Breillat

36 FILLETTE            B+                                                                                                               aka:  Virgin                                                                                                                               France  (84 mi)  1988  d: Catherine Breillat

Told using a quietly observant style, long-takes, static cameras, and an aesthetic of long shots, this is the only Breillat film that’s actually enjoyable to experience, though continually finding ways to confound viewers, initially declared a critical disaster until Michel Ciment of Positif praised it in Cannes, becoming her first film to gain international attention, quickly becoming the bestselling French export for the period.  Taking us back to our early teenage years when we craved anything new, bored by the stifling monotony of everyday life where nothing ever changed, always searching for something more, but having no idea how to find it, we all made dumb mistakes once, naively attracted to the mysteries of the unknown, wondering what we’d find, often blindly entering dangerous places, attracted by the newness of it all, but without a clue what might be in store.  Perhaps that’s the allure, where it hardly matters if it’s good or bad, but at least it made us feel like we actually existed, while at home no one ever saw us for who we were, not even ourselves, which is why we missed the danger signals in searching for something different.  That desire to seek out new experiences is a shining light at the end of a dark corridor, as it felt like there were no other options, so plunging headfirst into the darkness was our only way to find release.  People learn from their mistakes, which means they have to make mistakes, which is simply part of growing up.  Breillat senses this turbulent zone of teenage angst, too old to be a kid, but too young to be an adult, so where do you fit in?  This no man’s land is the territory explored in her early films, where it’s not just the kids making dumb mistakes, but the surrounding adults as well, where it’s impossible to think clearly under such dreadful circumstances, immersed in dead ends to nowhere.   While this is about a strong-willed girl with a woman’s body who’s only fourteen, with continual questions swirling around her head, but when she gets with a man who wants to have sex with her, she’s both attracted and repulsed, so she plays the game that young girls have to learn how to play, taking it slowly at first, but this is a dance with temptation and fate, where the outcome can be unpredictable, either deliriously wonderful of dreadfully horrible, as the pendulum swings both ways.  For many men, a woman’s sexuality and desire is basically non-existent, as sex only conforms to their own desires.  To see this from a female perspective, however, makes all the difference, as overall the film works to de-eroticize desire, becoming meticulously unerotic.  Yes, the girl is a tease, walking right into a situation with warning signs flashing all around her, thinking maybe she has control, but she’s never been in this situation before, leaving her questioning herself and the lingering question of what it’s all about, as reality never matches how it plays out in your head.  There’s a memorable scene in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (1971) where the look on Cybill Shepherd’s face expresses the relief of what everyone eventually needs to find out, where breaking that sexual mystery is one of life’s perplexing questions. 

Made nine years after her previous release, this terrific early film opens in the sunny resort town of Biarritz, the site of Éric Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert (Summer) (1986), an elegant seaside tourist destination known for its beaches and hotels, though this film mostly shows the town’s dull outskirts.  It’s here that we find fourteen-year-old Lili (Delphine Zentout) living in their family Winnebago parked on a jam-packed vacation campground with her endlessly bickering parents and older teenage brother, Jean-Pierre (Stéphane Moquet).  While they’re not on the best of terms, he is her salvation out of there, as otherwise she’s stuck being cooped up with her parents all day, suffocating from their disinterest, which is a real drag.  The teen years are a very symbolic period for Breillat, marking the beginning of her career as a writer and filmmaker, as she was only seventeen when she wrote and published her first novel, L’Homme facile (A Man for the Asking), yet the French government banned it for readers under 18 years old due to the erotic content.  Nouvelle Vague directors often adapted literary sources, as Godard’s Contempt (Le Mépris) (1963) was based on the novel by Alberto Moravia (1954) and Truffaut’s films SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960) and JULES AND JIM (1962) were adaptations of novels by David Goodis (1956) and by Henri-Pierre Roché (1953).  Breillat began her career by adapting her own novels, with three of her first films dealing with a coming-of-age teenage girl as her main focus, A REAL YOUNG GIRL (1976), based on her own novel Le Soupirail, actually released twenty-five years later in 2000 due to the bankruptcy of her producers, this one, and FAT GIRL (2001), all taking place during summer holiday, where the dullness of the place is reinforced by the oppressiveness of their parents, who sustain and perpetuate the repressive and controlling bourgeois society, yet this also becomes a place of adolescent exploration, searching out for a space of their own far away from their parent’s prying eyes.  These films deal with a woman’s lack of freedom, where ways to escape this oppression leads to an awkward rebelliousness, yet they are also deeply intimate expressions of the director’s own life, where literature and cinema are closely intertwined, as the sea becomes a place for Breillat’s young girls where they can create an imaginary space for themselves.  Living in a society where women are ashamed to admit to their fears or desires, Breillat shows how young girl’s lives have been sabotaged by a largely Catholic society that wants them to remain virgins until they can discover a husband they love.  These expectations carry a heavy weight, leading to sexual confusion, alienated from their own inner selves, often forced to denounce or disregard the outdated norms of society, questioning their own identity in a personal quest to discover their own individual notion of femininity, as virginity is viewed as a passage of womanhood.  Breillat firmly believes that cinema can ease the path for these young women, or help to open their eyes and show them the way.  Unfortunately, most of Breillat’s work generates considerable unease and delves into disturbing territory, where breaking boundaries and challenging taboos can also lead to a frank exploration of female sexual experiences that can sometimes border on masochism and cruelty, with the audience placed in an uncomfortable position of having to witness the unspeakable.  

Much like watching Émilie Dequenne in nearly every scene of the Dardenne brother’s ROSETTA (1999), Delphine Zentout is the story of this picture.  Unlike many of her other films, Breillat has finally found a character who is strong enough to carry the dramatic weight of the entire picture, where Zentout is never anything less than genuine.  Adapting her own 1987 novel of the same name, Breillat follows the exploits of an aggressive, sexually curious young girl on the verge of womanhood, and while she’s perpetually sullen and wildly flirtatious, also something of a spoiled brat, the film explores the notion of ambiguity that she embodies, filled with hesitancies and contradictions, having grown tired of being a virgin and what that seems to represent, so she attempts to assert her autonomy and individuality, defined by fluid, shifting desires, living in a state of continuous flux, as epitomized by her temporary seaside vacation environment.  Adolescence is a time when the desires of young girls are controlled and suppressed by a society that never really recognizes their individuality.  According to her parents, Lili is not allowed to go out on her own, as she’s too young, but can only leave accompanied by her brother, who, by contrast, can come and go as he pleases.  This authorized chaperone system is all a ruse, as Lili ditches him the first chance she gets and ends up hitchhiking into town on her own.  The bickering relationship with her brother mirrors what we see from their parents, where some of the mistrust and wild behavior of Lili may be linked to undermining treatment by both her parents and the physical abuse by her father, where underage sex may be seen as a rebellion against her depressing confinement.  Accordingly, she views virginity as a curse that deprives her of her independence, feeling like a stranger in her own body.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the appearance of Jean-Pierre Léaud as the famous concert pianist Boris Golovine, whose posters are seen all around town, with Lili running into him at an autograph signing in a local café, dressed in a corset and long black raincoat, where there is something inherently amusing about the burning intensity Léaud brings, seen in a formal tux, where his reputation and his connection to New Wave films precedes him, as he was something of a delinquent rebel himself as a teenager, so just his appearance alone brings a wry edge of humor.  The serious eye contact between Lili and Golovine is hilarious, as she’s impatiently standing off to the side, the only one not interested in an autograph, while he’s busily signing autographs for adoring fans, as suddenly a packed establishment is strangely empty, so they sit down together for a private conversation, which is surprisingly in-depth and personal, more so than any other sequence in the entire film.  Identifying with the world of creativity and women, as illustrated by his largely female admirers, Léaud is an emblematic figure in French cinema, where they discuss the travails of growing up bored and unappreciated, as she confesses her frustrations and desires, similar to the young Léaud, expressing a kind of me-against-the-world attitude, though both are rarely seen in the same shot, coming across as two soliloquies, yet he sympathetically encourages her to land in a different place.  While the scene is brief, it’s utterly delightful, a prelude for what’s to come, yet what stands out is the tinge of sadness she brings, completely humanizing her character, while it’s impossible not to notice the religious cross she wears on her necklace, a symbol of the burden she must overcome.

Finally making her way to the disco where Lili meets her brother, already passing out from the drinks, and an older man, Maurice (Étienne Chicot), who takes an interest in her youthful exhibitionism, as she’s seen flirting heavily with this forty-year-old man with a BMW convertible sports car and a receding hairline, who invites her to continue the conversation in the peace and quiet of his nearby luxury hotel room, a variation on similar scenes in FAT GIRL (2001) and SEX IS COMEDY (2002).  The protracted dance of seduction sequence is a delicate, difficult, painful, and tense scene that exposes Lili’s psychological hesitation and confusion, presented in real time with long, silent pauses, expressing a combination of angst, despair, and desire, really hoping he would educate her, turning into a cat and mouse game of feigning both interest and disinterest, where she is caustically sharp-tongued and quick-witted, offering a steady stream of insults, yet still balancing an adolescent’s awkwardness and burgeoning sex appeal.  For Maurice, something of an aging, chauvinistic playboy, it’s all about the male conquest, finding her a sexually captivating temptress, but he takes his time, probing through her defensive posture with carefully timed flattery and love chatter, indicating she is built “like a real woman,” eventually groping her for his own solo satisfaction, which she finds amusing, but it’s a humiliating and degrading experience, as he never even acknowledges her, blind to her individuality, defined only by her looks.  Shot on 35mm by Laurent Dailland, the use of cinematic close-ups on a women’s breasts and face keep women confined to the image of a sexual object.  Nonetheless, she learns from the experience and wants to see him again, perhaps hoping for some form of mutual acknowledgement.  By the time she and her brother arrive back home in the light of day, her father physically brutalizes her, an emotionally impactful moment that only accentuates the psychological degradation.  Her mother just stays out of it, never intervening, which only alienates her daughter even further, where the family dysfunction just adds another layer of agonizing confusion, which only amplifies her need for independence.  For Breillat, the male imagination views women as unknowable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable, often wanting to beat women into submission in order to maintain patriarchal control.  All the more reason for Lili to want someone who actually cares about her, spending some time just walking around the beach with Maurice, finding an isolated cove where things get heated, but shame and guilt make her indecisive and she finally refuses to give herself to Maurice and instead pleasures him, shown in real-time sex, but Maurice is getting a little irritated that she continually rejects his advances.  It’s his lack of respect that opens her eyes, finally realizing that she’ll never matter to him, a discovery that is in some ways liberating, as this opens the door for an experience with someone closer to her own age, Bertrand (Olivier Parnière), a gangly red-headed guy hanging around the beach with his family, bright (an egghead), not particularly good looking (described as hideous), and somewhat dull, where he’s been spending his vacation reading Dostoyevksy’s The Idiot, yet he jumps at the opportunity to have sex with her, with Lili finally realizing you don’t have to care, just enjoy the experience, all set up by the music of teen idol Ricky Nelson - I'll Walk Alone YouTube (2:39), an affirmation that she can finally just be herself and not have to worry about the judgements and expectations of others.  Sexual relationships are not just a loss of virginity, but a path to knowledge, an expression of who she is becoming as a woman, with the ending reflecting Lili’s newly discovered subjectivity, where a freeze frame on the final shot is a reference to the iconic image of Jean-Pierre Léaud at the end of François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), suggesting she is defiantly where she wants to be.  

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