Movies - November

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	Movies - November

November is a psychological thriller film first screened at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival (see 2004 in film). It stars Courteney Cox as Sophie, a photographer whose life begins to unravel following a traumatic incident on November 7 that involved her boyfriend, played by James LeGros. In the words of Cox, her character "goes through three phases. First there's denial. Then she feels guilty and sad about the situation. Then she has to learn to accept it". The film co-stars Michael Ealy as a co-worker of Sophie's, Nora Dunn as her psychiatrist, and Anne Archer as her mother. Nick Offerman plays a police officer investigating the incident, while Matthew Carey has a role as a robber of a convenience store.

The low-budget independent film was directed by Greg Harrison, written by Benjamin Brand and Harrison, and produced by Danielle Renfrew and Gary Winick. It was released to theatres in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics on July 22, 2005 (see 2005 in film), and while its award-winning digital video photography was praised, many reviews criticised the film's story for being too ambiguous and derivative of other pictures. Critics have compared it to the work of film-makers such as David Lynch and M. Night Shyamalan.

Plot

On the evening of November 7th, photographer Sophie Jacobs (Courteney Cox) and her attorney boyfriend Hugh (James LeGros) go to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. As they travel home afterwards, Sophie develops a craving for "something sweet", and stops their car at a convenience store. While Hugh is in the store buying some chocolate for Sophie, a man (Matthew Carey) with a gun arrives and holds up the store, shooting the store clerk, his son, and Hugh dead. He runs away as Sophie looks on in horror.

Sophie descends into a pit of guilt and despair, and cannot bring herself to erase Hugh's voice from their apartment's answering machine. She consults her psychiatrist, Dr. Fayn (Nora Dunn), about persistent headaches that she has been suffering from since Hugh's death. After months of sessions with Sophie, Dr. Fayn discovers that the headaches started to occur before the incident at the convenience store. Eventually, Sophie admits that she had been having an affair with a co-worker, Jesse (Michael Ealy). Well after Hugh's death, Sophie also comes to reconnect with her mother, Carol Jacobs (Anne Archer), who comments "I hate to see you looking so...morbid" during dinner at a restaurant. Reaching for a glass of red wine, however, her mother accidentally knocks her glass over, and the wine spreads out over the white tablecloth, saturating it.

For a college photography class that she teaches, Sophie sets up a slide projector for the students to showcase their finest photographs. During the slide show, one slide turns up that depicts the exterior of the convenience store on that fateful evening of November 7th. Sophie contacts Officer Roberts (Nick Offerman), the head of the investigation into the shootings at the convenience store, who is as puzzled as she is as to who is responsible for the photos. Sophie's headaches continue, and she begins to hear strange noises emanating from within her apartment building, as well as mysterious voices on the phone. Later, Officer Roberts discovers that the photo of the convenience store was paid for with Sophie's credit card.

The film repeats these events with subtle but significant differences between each sequence. One suggests that Sophie was present at the shootings, and was only spared by the negligence of the shooter, while another suggests that he simply ran out of bullets. One implies that Sophie actually died during the incident, along with Hugh, and there is a suggestion that Sophie's lover, Jesse, was involved. Sophie must figure out which "version" of the truth she has been presented with is real before she loses grip on her sanity, and her life.

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