Addition review: Toni Jordan adaptation doesn’t quite add up

You can’t tell a love story that only features one person. A story about obsession or infatuation, sure – but if it’s a story about a relationship, it’s not going to work if you’re not willing to share the spotlight. The strange thing about Addition is that on one level, it clearly knows this.

Addition is the story of Grace (Teresa Palmer), a woman getting through life just fine so long as she can count everything around her and doesn’t have to deal with too many stressful situations. Her need to have an even 10 bananas at the supermarket leads her to steal one from Seamus (Joe Dempsie), who stays interested in her even when he realises this isn’t an aggressive form of flirting. So far, so meet cute.

But does she need someone in her life, even someone she thinks she might ‘really fucking like’?

Teresa Palmer brings a spiky energy to Grace

Grace’s academic career (she’s a mathematician, obviously) is doing well, and she has a fantasy boyfriend in the form of Nikola Tesla (Eamon Farren) waiting for her at home. Even her family – mother Marj (Sarah Peirse), perpetually annoyed sister Jill (Adrienne Pickering) and musical niece Larry (Lou Baxter) – are supportive because everyone remembers what happened with Grace not so long ago.

A second chance encounter with Seamus teeters on disaster – she really doesn’t like her coffee shop routine being disrupted – but when love wins out it seems like she’s well on her way to a real relationship. But is that what she really wants?

Seamus seems to know how to navigate to complexities of getting close to another person; Grace isn’t quite ready to let her defences down, especially as those defences might be the only things enabling her to get through the day.

Directed by Marcelle Lunam, and adapted from a novel by Toni Jordan, Addition does a solid job of exploring who Grace is and how her condition has affected her life. Her particular strand of obsessive-compulsive disorder is an essential part of her; the journey here isn’t towards some kind of ‘cure’ so much as it is a way for her to find room for love and connection in between all the counting.

Grace’s struggle is effectively presented, and she’s a spiky, unfiltered presence throughout the film. Palmer gives an engaging and forceful performance that doesn’t shy away from the character’s unlikable side, presenting Grace as a fully rounded person who’s more than a collection of tics and a dark backstory.

Watch the Addition trailer

Fantasy boyfriend vs fantasy boyfriend

It’s the clash between who she is and the love she desires that drives Addition. At first glance she has it all: Seamus falling for her in a supermarket carpark is completely believable. But who she is can be incompatible with a relationship.

At one stage she skips out on a date because she has to count toothbrush bristles (which rapidly spirals out into a whole thing), which is tragic in its own right and a threat to the future of a relationship we should be heavily invested in.

Unfortunately, Addition is barely interested in Seamus as anything more than the kind of idealised boyfriend who will put up with pretty much anything so we can see just how far Grace is willing to go to blow things up.

If there was any real depth to him at all then there might have been some stakes with the relationship; as it stands, her fantasy boyfriend comes across as a more well-rounded character (she definitely has more chemistry with him).

Likewise, the various subplots with Grace’s family either go nowhere or are handwaved away. Each member is defined by a single character trait or issue that eventually proves irrelevant to Grace so it’s quietly dropped, leaving the film feeling a little like a conversation with someone who constantly keeps dragging things back to themselves.

Grace is a strong central character who could easily have anchored either a bubbly rom-com or a more sombre look at her struggles. But Addition never gives anyone else in her orbit enough air to breathe, filling her life with characters that seem coloured by her avoidance of human contact, a collection of annoyances she’d rather do without.

The vivid central character prevents this from being a failure, but the cardboard cutout characters that surround her prevent this film from ever developing any real dramatic or romantic stakes. Everything aside from Grace here is no more substantial than the numbers she imagines cascading down around her; for a film so obsessed with counting, this never figures out what comes after one.

Addition is in cinemas from 29 January.

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