MIFF 2025: The Love That Remains

Melbourne International Film Festival 2025 is ongoing and I went to watch my fifth session (of 12!)

This post my short review of “The Love That Remains”

For context: I am a photographer/youtuber that wants to up my cinematography and storytelling, that’s why I’m watching 12 sessions at the film festival PLUS reviewing them here on my blog!

I was running a bit for the movie, I think that it just started when I came in… but who knows huhu. You know that feeling of “did I miss something, what’s happening here?” because you don’t know if you missed something important or not? That was me for the first 30 minutes. It didn’t help that the film had some surreal moments baked into the otherwise normal world

All stills courtesy of miff.com.au

Structure

The movie kind of lasted for a whole year, with season changes signified by the literal mountains that they are surrounded by. Every single shot in nature I was like “dang, how would it be living there, I want to try that!”. The location of the film is amazing. The characters are great too! It introduced the characters pretty well, including the dog, Panda — one of the big highlights of the movie for me, just so so cute.

The story jumped between locations because the dad works on a boat and the mom is an artist. They never really show the kids going to school or anything, it was mainly about the home life and the work life of the mom and dad. The storyline is mostly linear in time with the location jumping around. However, it has these surreal clips in the middle that kind of throw me off the first time. After it happened again and again, the surreal-ness felt natural and just part of the film. Some of the “this is just life” parts seem quite similar to how some YouTubers structure their vlogging videos, especially the more “cinematic” creators. Well, maybe it’s the other way around, those creators are following the structure of films like this.

Narrative

The story follows the family after the parents separated and are doing co-parenting. The dad is away a lot due to his job as a sailor, and the mom struggles with proving herself as an artist. The slices of happiness in everyday life really made it seem like it was working quite well. However, of course, there were moments of discourse between different parties. Moreover, there are those surreal moments in a seemingly normal world. Like, very weird kind of surreal. An example is the still below with the fish body and head being separated. It was part of a montage with a monologue with all the family members doing something weird like holding a fish and splitting it into two. I honestly felt kind of lost, and it didn’t help that I was late to the movie so I kept thinking “is this weird for everyone or just for me because I missed something at the start…?”

Some surreal movies I’d watch again to try to figure out what happened. For this one, I’d be happy to watch a recap video on Youtube explaining to me the meaning of all this haha, or at least their interpretation of it.

Cinematography

The cinematography was sooo on point. The location was beautiful and the shots really showcased that. I also want to mention the music that went along the “everyday moments” shots, just a solo slow piano song, so good. I mentioned this before, but it reminds of the movie “Perfect Days”. The kind of wide shot, to close ups, and light flickering back and forth. The slowness of it as well, there are moments where the shot was held on for few moments longer than I would say is “typical”, and that slowed down the whole pace and made it pleasing to digest. Not sure if all these points are cinematography or mostly directing/writing, but anyways.

Who would I recommend it to?

People who like surreal films. It felt like something supernatural happened, at the same time the world is so normal that maybe it’s just trying to convey a poetic message. If that sentence excites you instead of putting you off, then you’d enjoy the film!