Emotional Arithmetic (film)

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Emotional Arithmetic is a Canadian film directed by Paolo Barzman and adapted by Jefferson Lewis, from the novel by the late Canadian writer Matt Cohen. In the leading roles, the cast includes Gabriel Byrne, Roy Dupuis, Christopher Plummer, Susan Sarandon, and Max von Sydow. Film production is scheduled to begin in Québec, in October 2006. The film will be made in English.

According to Production Weekly:

. . . the film probes the intricate possibilities of love and madness and the shadows the past throws upon the present. Three people who formed a life-long bond in a concentration camp are re-united for the first time forty years later in the bucolic setting of a renovated farm.

Sarandon will play Melanie Lansing Winters, a beautiful woman in her 50’s who balances her precarious emotional state with an innate sharp, deprecating wit. Byrne will play Christopher Lewis, a British novelist haunted by the survivor’s eternal question - “Why was I saved?” Von Sydow will play Jakob Bronski, a heroic dissident and veteran of a Soviet psychiatric hospital; who loses and saves his family twice and David Winter[s] (Plummer), Melanie’s husband, whose compulsive infidelity has left him with a marriage in tatters and an embittered son (Dupuis). On a balmy summer evening, the past explodes into the present in an unexpected and tender love story and its fatal consequences. The ‘emotional arithmetic’ of the title refers to the characters’ struggle to face the past and move on.^[1]

The film is backed by SODEC and "produced by Suzanne Girard of Productions BBR and Anna Stratton and Robin Cass of Triptych Media, distributed by Seville."^[2]

[edit] Notes

^ "Casting Adds Up"; cited in "Gabriel Byrne. . ." in MovieWeb.
^ Matthew Hays, "Arcand Feature Gets Green Light," Playback 26 June 2006: 2.

[edit] References

Al-Salaylee, Kamal. "Plummer's Prescription." Globe and Mail 6 Sept. 2006: R3. (Restricted online access: Only available to Insider Edition subscribers.)
"Casting Adds Up for 'Emotional Arithmetic.'" Production Weekly 12 Sept. 2006. Accessed 15 Sept. 2006.
"Gabriel Byrne, Christopher Plummer and Susan Sarandon to Star in Emotional Arithmetic." MovieWeb 13 Sept. 2006. [Information taken from Production Weekly.]
Gaudet, Agnès. "Emotional Arithmetic: Roy Dupuis dans un film sur l'Holocauste." Journal de Montréal 15 Sept. 2006. Accessed 16 Sept. 2006.
"Un gros tournage américan au Québec le mois prochain." Corus Nouvelles: La Référence Nouvelles au Québec 13 Sept. 2006, Arts et Spectacles.
Hays, Matthew. "Arcand Feature Gets Green Light." Playback Magazine 26 June 2006: 2. Rpt. in Karl Archambault ("weblogue" [blog]) 25 June 2006. Both accessed 15 Sept. 2006.
–––. "Lewis Does the Arithmetic." Playback Magazine 2 Oct. 2006. Accessed 11 Oct. 2006.
"This Week In Production Weekly - 531 - September 14, 2006 (92 listings)." Production Weekly 13 Sept. 2006. Accessed 15 Sept. 2006.
Typescripts of earlier screenplay adaptation by the late Matt Cohen deposited in the Matt Cohen Fond (archive) at The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University.