“Addition” isn’t so much Will-They-Won’t-They as They-Did-So-What-Now?
That’s familiar territory for plenty of people coping with mental illness in their intimate relationships and a strong subject for director Marcelle Lunam’s charming feature debut. This seriocomic romance is an imperfect meet-cute about living and dating with high-functioning anxiety that won’t work for everyone but may prove essential to the right audience. With a colorful snapshot of a complex narrator, screenwriter Becca Johnstone pulls fresh feeling from author Toni Jordan’s well-celebrated 2008 novel for this winsome movie, which recently premiered at TIFF.
Grace Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) is a 34-year-old mathematician who is clearly dealing with something when we find her diligently counting produce in the grocery store. After Grace meets the kind and dashing Seamus (Joe Dempsie) at checkout — stealing one of his bananas to make sure she’s buying an even ten — sparks erupt between the “Warm Bodies” sweetheart and “Game of Thrones” heartthrob. Theirs is a connection so intoxicating it not only earns an eventual Nick Drake needle-drop, but makes good on a clever homage to Rita Hayworth’s femme fatale in “Gilda.”
A kind of antiheroine in her own right, the thorny Grace seems like a manic-pixie-dream-girl for a few scenes, but isn’t playing hard-to-get when Seamus chases her down in the parking lot. No, the whip-smart and charismatic leading lady is just struggling to “hide the crazy” from a guy she might “really fucking like” in a visual world that’s overwhelmed by her obsessive-compulsive tendencies. Cascading numbers pile up in the frame like a Nora Ephron-inspired “Limitless” and the counting might push Grace to a public breakdown in a lesser film. She almost gets there when the pair meets again at a local café, but sidesteps catastrophe by embracing her hard-won routine, even disrupted by Seamus.
Numbering everything from her love interest’s eyelashes to the bites of pie she’s eating while seated across from him, Grace navigates a disorder that’s widely known but rarely understood as a complex and persistent condition. Repetitive compulsive behaviors are frequently depicted — often in film but even more so on TV — as compelling demonstrations of anxious characters’ deep inner turmoil; see “Girls,” “Glee,” and “Monk” for starters. “Addition” sets itself apart considering how secretly managing chronic symptoms can make them more isolating for some people. It also asks why that’s hard on those who love them most.
As an accomplished academic, Grace wields fixation as her greatest strength and her biggest weakness. Creativity kept her company for years before Seamus — a fantasy version of Nikola Tesla (Eamon Farren) appears as her on-again-off-again imaginary boyfriend throughout — and her considerable intelligence makes it easier to lie about the feelings she’s facing. Even surrounded by her nagging sister Jill (Adrienne Pickering), doting mother Marj (Sarah Peirse), and precocious niece Larry (Lou Baxter), Grace is quick to dismiss her considerable struggles from the recent past as medical anecdotes of a bygone personal era. The script only alludes to what happened to Grace for most of the film, but the likable cast conveys an earnest and recognizable concern always. Her therapist Ava (Zahra Newman) explores this most.
No one wants Grace to be alone, least of all Grace. And yet, one question looms large: Is she ready for this? Animalistic sex that loses its luster and snide remarks aimed at Seamus amid extra hard times suggest maybe she’s not. The result is a story that, rife with setbacks for the tough-fighting Grace and sweetly dedicated Seamus, feels authentic and organic despite its sun-soaked genre of choice. Grace mercifully avoids archetypes — both as the so-called “victim” in a mental health drama and as the cute girl in an offbeat rom-com — as a character whose predicament isn’t her fault, per se, but whose mental healthcare is very much her responsibility. That’s a wise approach for “Addition” to take as a film that’s both directly challenging a social stigma and sly attempting to subvert storytelling stereotypes.
The script allows Grace to describe how she’s feeling much of the time, but the director’s more meta efforts to get inside her head don’t always pay off. Cacophonous sound design overlaps with Grace’s frantic narration and the mood grows a bit too muddled. As a matter of cinematic craft, other works have explored the internal-external divide of mental health more clearly. (Prime Video’s grief-centric “Fleabag” and the Anne Hathaway-starring episode of “Modern Love,” about a woman with bipolar disorder, come to mind.) But the wandering tone and itinerant plot used here don’t seem to suggest a lack of vision so as much as a genuine endeavor to capture how complicated some psychological challenges can be.
Strong relationships may seem like a pipe dream for some people dealing with mental health obstacles. That’s a tremendously difficult subject to navigate, but “Addition” goes far by following the thoroughly imagined Grace all the way through to the optimistic conclusion on her intriguing stop-and-start journey. With a vibrant cast (it’s worth stating plainly: Palmer is excellent) and an ambitious conceit, this valiant adaptation is hardly algebraic — but achieves different artistry embracing the imperfect. No doubt, it could be someone’s comfort watch or cause for hope that one-plus-one may yet equal two.
Grade: B
“Addition” premiered September 9 at TIFF. The film is for sale with WME Independent selling.
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