Displaying items by tag: Lou Baxter

ADDITION

Australia, 2024, 91 minutes, Colour.

Teresa Palmer, Joe Dempsie, Eamon Farrow, Sarah Peirse, Adrienne Pickering, Lou Baxter, Sara Newman.

Directed by Marcelle Lunam.

A cinema adaptation of a very popular novel by Australian writer, Tony Jordan, published in 2008.

This is a film about mental health, the focus on a young woman and her continued anxiety, manifesting itself in the condition, arithmomania, an obsessive-compulsive need to count. The audience is introduced to her condition by meeting Grace, Teresa Palmer in an ingratiating and challenging performance, suddenly taking a banana from a customer at the supermarket. She has nine and wants to make an even ten. The customer, Seamus (Joe Dempsie from Game of Thrones) has seen what she has done and challenges her. He later encounters her again and a friendship begins.

The audience is invited to spend a great deal of time with Grace, seeing her tutoring students at school with maths, especially her niece, visits with her sympathetic mother, her demanding lawyer sister, becoming more aware of Grace’s long time problems and the family trying to deal with them.

Then, the audience discovers that she has a long time imaginary friend, in fact, the scientist and entrepreneur, Nicholas Tesla (played by Eamon Farren) his presence in the house, the range of their conversations, the discussions of her problems, happy Times, dancing together, a friend and confidante.

One of the features of the film is that the county is visualised, actual numbers and lists of numbers appearing on screen, some indication of what it is like for Agrees to have this experience of counting and the need for reassurance. She counts tables in restaurants looking for free tables, she counts eyelashes and friends, she counts pieces of cake into numbered portions.

Seamus adapts himself to her counting in their relationship, finding it hard, and the subject sometimes of graces self-justifying taunts. But, on the other hand, she does visit a very sympathetic therapist, who is direct, and Molly Connolly, suggests a program, accepts that categories will turn it will not, but provides a listening sensitivity.

The film runs for 90 minutes, and, perhaps, audiences would have liked some more sequences and time to appreciate what has happened, what is happening in graces day by day life, the nature of the opposition, its effect on her, and the possibilities of future coping with it.

One is tempted to say that the title of the novel and film about mathematics is a plus!

1. A drama about mental health?
2. City setting, Melbourne, and pursuit of the city, homes, flats, school, supermarkets, therapy sessions…? The musical score?
3. Grace and her condition, arithmomania, an obsessive-compulsive need to count? The opening at the supermarket, the tent and a knife or neatness, the visualising of the numbers on the screen, her range of counting, eyelids, pieces of cake…? Her anxieties, security and numbers and counting? Affecting her whole life? Her past, family situation, tragedies and feelings, the character of her mother and her kindness and support, Jill, practical, lawyer, hard, exasperated with Grace? Her niece, talent with numbers, coaching her, the competition and practice?
4. Grace as a mathematician, training, coaching the students, the sessions with them? With her niece? Possibilities for her career as mathematician, the scene of application for further studies?
5. The encounter with Seamus at the supermarket, his conversation about seeing what she did, the arguments about ownership of the banana? The next encounter, the attraction? Grace and her personal life, the response to Seamus, caution, entering the relationship, his response to her?
6. Part of her mental condition was admiration for Tesla, the story of his life and success, his later financial and mental collapse, his death? His appearing to her, a companion for so many years, the domestic scenes, the conversations, his encouragement, the dancing together, her explaining this to the therapist? Her finally having to let him go?
7. The development of the relationship with Seamus, together, sexual, emotional? The effect on him? The effect on her, the combat compatibility of the relationship with her condition?
8. The test, but forgetting, Seamus taking her, her apologies, her knees, the drinking, the escapade with her friends, her mother upset, the reaction to Grace?
9. Grace, the difficulties with Seamus, her being demanding, self-centred, alienating him? His absence? The lookalike and the girl at the supermarket and graces reaction?
10. The scenes with the therapist, coming and going, the patients and the therapist, sympathetic, clear, medication, the body issues, exercise? The effect, stopping the medication? The return to the therapist?
11. Encountering Seamus, his background, England, artist, age, the effect of Greece?
12. Audience identification with Grace, as a person, her condition, yet siding with the therapist, sympathy but challenge?