Emotional Arithmetic

First off, Las Vegas was amazing!!! We even came back with money.

All right, The Kingston Canadian Film Festival 2008 edition was a success. Thought we'd get a chance to see more films, but did manage to see one, Emotional Arithmetic.

It's a film about three people who reunite after forming a bond in a prison camp during World War Two. It stars Susan Sarandon, Gabriel Byrnes, Roy Dupuis and Max Von Sydow.

Emotional Arthimetic has its heart in the right place, but somewhere loses the momentum.

Christopher Plummer is outstanding as David Winters, Melanie Lansing Winters(Susan Sarandon)husband. Other than his performance, it seemed like the other stars just drove up to Canada, filmed their scenes, picked up their pay cheques and drove home.

It wasn't their fault. The screenplay was weak. Certain scenes didn't pay off and others were there just to be there. For example, Roy Dupuis' character, Benjamin Winters still lived at home while raising his son. The script mentions his wife, but fails to mention that maybe she died, divorced, whatever. It didn't work. He's a chef in the film, but his food preperation skills never connected to the plot.

A quarter of the way into the film, Melanie Lansing Winters starts taking her meds. It should have been introduced before, like the first time we see her.

Gabriel Byrnes character, Christopher Lewis is Irish. He has an accent. When they show flashbacks, he's a child without an accent. In fact, as Mary Beth pointed out; everyone had accents in a film set in the Eastern Townships. The problem? nobody spoke French.

Max Von Sydow's Jakob Bronski fires a gun. David hears the rifle going off and confronts him. Later, he tells Melanie that he sees death in Jakob. When you see the film, you'll understand why this doesn't make sense.

Finally, screenplays have three acts. This film had four. Another example of a four act film was Pollock. Really, a four act film has bookends that carry on for twenty more minutes, thus dragging out the film and adding more information that should have been spread out through the first three acts.

The film wasn't horrible, but with an incredible cast and an intriguing story, it could have been tighter and well, better.

** (out of five)