Given my admiration for Max Von Sydow, Christopher Plummer, Susan Sarandon and Gabriel Byrne (in that order) I guess I expected too much. A good-looking film as landscapes go but any sustained emotional tone the film starts to develop is almost constantly compromised by explanatory flashbacks and repetitious detail, which don't really take the viewer anywhere. I kept thinking at various junctures that maybe the story will pick-up steam and hold my interest, but disappointingly this never happened. My sense of the characters was that they somehow lacked connectedness (or chemistry) with each performing independently. The emotional arithmetic was missing (sorry, couldn't help that!!), or perhaps this had to do with a poorly crafted screenplay. I also don't understand why the film is going by two different names i.e. Autumn Hearts and Emotional Arithmetic. And what was the kid doing in the film!! Most disappointing, and what a waste of a stellar cast, including Roy Dupuis (sp?).
Review of Emotional Arithmetic
