TIFF 2024 Review: Addition – “What starts out as a more typical rom-com does become more serious in the second half”

Courtesy of TIFF

To Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer), everything is seen in numbers.  There are nineteen letters in her name, for instance.  The number of poppy seeds on the cake she orders every day from her local coffee shop dictates the number of bites she must take.  At the grocery store, she wants a specific number of items.  Just like her stable routine, numbers just make sense to Grace.  They are a constant and they never lie. Counting calms her and gives her a sense of control.  

It makes sense then that she is a mathematician by trade, but her mental health has kept her from doing exactly what she might like with her degree, instead she’s tutoring kids.  She spends time with her mother, sister, and niece who are always concerned about her wellbeing.  Grace also has a confidante in an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Nikola Tesla (Eamon Farren) in whom she feels comfortable revealing anything.  

So when Grace one day runs into Seamus (Joe Dempsie) her routine suddenly takes a turn.  Seamus senses that something about Grace is a little different, but it doesn’t dissuade his interest.  Yet, as the two form a deeper relationship, Grace feels she needs to ‘hide the crazy’ from Seamus, which seemingly only makes her counting worse.  The fact that he tries to take her out for dim sum on a date probably doesn’t help, likely the worst type of restaurant for someone with arithmomania – there are so many things that can be counted. Dumplings! Steamers! Spring rolls! Grace is then faced with decisions to make about how much she reveals to Seamus, and how to balance her new relationship while still being herself.  

This is director Marcelle Lunam’s first narrative feature, having previously helmed the 2023 documentary Habana Shakes.  Based on the 2008 book of the same name by Toni Jordan, and adapted by Becca Johnstone, Addition is a romantic comedy with perhaps a bit more of a message than most – about what it means to grapple with crippling anxiety and how that impacts relationships, and in fact life itself.   

To help the audience understand Grace’s counting, Lunam employs animated calculations and numbers that pop up on the screen, even on places like Seamus’ eyelashes.  It’s playful but also informative to have a visual representation of Grace’s compulsion.  What starts out as a more typical rom-com does become more serious in the second half, and while this mild change in tone means the film loses a bit of that light-hearted momentum it’s also the more important part of the film.  

As Grace attempts to confront her need to count, what impacted me most was that Addition really focused on the fact that it was a journey.  Mental health does not conform to one solution for everyone, and this film really tried to portray this in the different ways Grace tries to heal.  Whether it is trialing different medications or different therapies, these can also impact a person holistically, and the film doesn’t shy away from that. 

Addition is made better due to the charm of its lead Teresa Palmer who is a delight to watch.  And she has a breezy, fun chemistry with Dempsie.  But, the scenes where the manifested Nikola Tesla arrives are somewhat few and far between making this device in the film fairly unnecessary despite the best intentions.  Overall Addition is fun and entertaining, the type of movie that would be right at home somewhere like Netflix where you can watch it on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  It’s not a perfect film, but it gets things right, where it ‘counts.’

Addition had its world premiere September 8, 2024 at the Toronto International Film Festival.  For more information head to tiff.net