The Film Stage by Luke Hicks

The screenplay is overflowing with memorable meditations, blunt-but-heartfelt exchanges, and piercing affection for its people, all rooted in the natural world around them.

Next Best Picture by Max Borg

The subdued, naturalistic, and sometimes playful approach to the subject is a welcome departure from more conventional family dramas about separation.

Variety by Guy Lodge

Wise and lyrical and strange, The Love That Remains thrives on its profound understanding of each family’s individual oddness, and the incremental confusion with which growing children regard their parents, as their elders grow smaller and more flawed by the day.

Wall Street Journal by Zachary Barnes

As the title suggests, this isn’t a film focused simply on the ruins of a relationship so much as one with an eye on what’s worth keeping.

The Playlist by Iana Murray

There’s a noble search for meaning in the grass, sea and mountains, but it couldn’t hurt to have characters vocalize their feelings even just once. There is a story here, though Pálmason only really alludes to it.

Screen Daily by Wendy Ide

There’s an undertow of melancholy certainly, but also a light, buoyant quality to a film that cherishes its moments of humour and absurdity.

The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney

There’s much to admire in Pálmason’s unconventional approach to what could have been familiar domestic drama. But the dreamlike detours threaten to overwhelm the tender portrait of a family breakup.

IndieWire by David Katz

Pálmason’s overall sincerity has its dividends, even for what it lacks in candidness: the poignant closing shot distills that this is his vision on this eternal topic, open to the risk that its alternating visual modes won’t harmonize.

Slant Magazine by Kenji Fujishima

Hlynur Pálmason, who has a background in visual art, explores the film’s family dynamics through a vignette-like structure that sometimes feels akin to walking through an art exhibition.

The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw

The effect is tender, sympathetic, diverting and often very elegant and indirect. But it withholds from us the full, real pain of damaged love.