Now Showing: Sweet November

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Sweet November

by Cole Smithey

Patronizingly euphoric and romantically forced, Sweet November plays audience heartstrings like a violinist with a bad ear playing out of key. Every once in a while the movie gets lucky and hits a few harmonious notes, but for the most part there’s just a lot clanging pitches being tossed about. The filmmakers and actors seek refuge around the story’s artifice by sincerely embracing San Francisco neighborhoods (such as Noe Valley and Potrero Hill) in a glaring attempt at fusing believability from exterior sources. Charlize Theron (Sara Deever) is too naturally glamorous and healthy to play an ailing social misfit in the habit of taking guys into her apartment as live-ins for a month at a time to overhaul their faulty personalities. Keanu Reeves’ stilted style of acting fits romance like a fish to a telephone, but the inscrutably flat actor compensates by smiling as much as possible.

Nelson Moss (Reeves) is a workaholic advertising hot shot for a big ad firm. That is until his lack of driving knowledge causes him to attempt cheating on a written driver’s test by asking fellow test-taker Sara Deever for an answer. The test administer catches Sara and tears up her exam, telling her she can return 30 days later for another shot at renewing her license. Nelson finishes his test only to find Sara sitting on his spiffy Mercedes with baited breath waiting for the guy who ruined her driving privileges. Nelson tries to buy redemption with cash but Sara wants no part of the money. She sees Nelson as a troubled and narcissistic challenge for her special brand of rehabilitation by sex and togetherness.

Sara forces her way into a date with Nelson (wherein she breaks and enters a building to rescue two puppies from some undisclosed torture). She immediately invites Nelson to move in with her for one month of her inestimable help under the condition that he abandon his work and current lifestyle entirely while in her care. It’s a happy coincidence then that Nelson loses both his job and his girlfriend the very next day. Nelson’s double crisis sends him back into Sara’s bed for a bout with self-discovery by way of sex, bubble baths, dog walking, and baby-sitting a fatherless neighborhood kid named Abner (Liam Aiken - Stepmom).

Sara’s character comes perilously close to a stalking manipulator with a bag of disarming tricks up her sleeve. She’s a butterfly collector who wants to charm the caterpillar into changing. For all of her low ego preaching, there’s isn’t enough information about exactly how many men she’s cycled through her personal grass roots program for personal growth or what her leftist philosophies entail. Although we do find out through a conversation with her cross-dressing neighbor Chaz (Jason Isaacs - The Patriot) that she has had previous marriage proposals from past recipients of her low impact program. Her month-long timetable seems to be a hidden agenda for a controlled period of romance wherein the guy falls desperately in love with her cute-as-a-button charms so she can announce ‘sorry, times up’ at the end of the month.

The film’s overstated message is that the real joy of living can’t be found in immersing yourself in business. This is made blatantly clear by Chaz, who turns out to be Nelson’s alter ego and thematic voice of the story. It turns out that Chaz is a heavy-hitter in Nelson’s advertising world, although it takes a while for Nelson to discover. Even though Chaz has made more of a mark in the ad industry, he, unlike Nelson, finds time to loll around his neighbor’s apartment every morning for coffee, and entertains dinner guests in his designer apartment with the help of his cross-dressing lover.

The whole premise for Sweet November could be viewed as an antidote for Reeves acting. It’s a vehicle for the ultra-hip, hi-tech monotone actor to take a step a back, wear crummy slacker clothes and get in touch with his more touchy-feely side. When Nelson tells Sara, after their first day of hanging out together that his ‘third eye didn’t open,’ it comes off as guffaw of double entendre. Costume Designer Shay Cunliffe (A Civil Action) punches some raw humor into the movie with a few choice clothing ensembles that really take the characters out there as San Francisco denizens.

Jason Isaacs does some fine scene stealing as Chaz. The chameleon actor tactfully offsets the film’s lacking narrative inertia with his every misdirecting gesture and word of impeccable diction. The dinner scene between Nelson and Sara with their two dress-wearing hosts, gives the movie its most socially layered scene. Reeves plays Nelson like a boat adrift at sea despite the fact that his character is supposed to have been born and raised in San Francisco.