Paolo Barzman‘s Emotional Arithmetic, a drama about three Holocaust survivors reuniting at a Canadian dinner party after 40 years apart, sounds moderately intriguing, especially with actors like Gabriel Byrne, Susan Sarandon, Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer costarring. All the better that Emotional Arithmetic will be the closing night film at the Toronto Film Festival.
But talk about a title that will grab each and every low-thread-counter in each and every city across the globe and say to them, “Don’t see this movie unless you know exactly what ’emotional arithmetic’ might specifically mean. Clearly, the use of this title indicates that we ourselves don’t know what it means, which is a way of saying the movie may be an art-house circle jerk. Lord knows, there is emotional arithmetic to be calculated when you order 99 cent cheesebugers at your local McDonalds — it’s a totally meaningless term.”