November (film) - Promotion and Reception

Promotion and Reception

November was included in the Official Selection at the Sundance Film Festival, and received its first public screening there on January 18, 2004. For her work on the film, the festival's Excellence in Cinematography Award went to Nancy Schreiber, who said it was "quite a shock, since it was on mini-dv and we were up against films shot on film". Reviews were generally positive; Guylaine Cadorette said the film was "sure to garner buzz" outside of the fest, while Variety's Todd McCarthy wrote that the film was "a stylistic tour de force dedicated more to constructing a cinematic puzzle than to providing dramatic satisfaction". Producers were reluctant to sell the picture to a distributor quickly, and Roger Friedman of Fox News commented that they "may have overplayed their hand in juggling offers". The film was eventually sold later that year to Sony Pictures Classics, which had handled Groove. After the Sundance screening Harrison returned to the editing room to make final tweaks to the film. That year, Courteney Cox became pregnant with her first child, and producers realised she would be unavailable to promote the film until after she gave birth. After some deliberation, it was decided that the film would not be released to theaters until the following summer. However, it was screened outside the United States at the Oslo International Film Festival on November 20, 2004.

Danielle Renfrew was nominated for the Producers Award at the 2005 Independent Spirit Awards—the ceremony for which was held in February 2005—in part for her work on November. On April 26, 2005 the film was screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival, whose organisers described it as a "homage to the mindbending thrillers of David Lynch ... Inspired by the perception-versus-reality mindgames of Mulholland Drive and the eerie psychological aesthetic of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now". Audience response at its screening at the festival was generally positive, but critic Brandon Judell dismissed the film as "highly irritating and nonsensical," while Joanne Beally said it was "a Mulholland Drive / David Lynch copycat ... even at 88 minutes, it was too long for me." The film made subsequent appearances at the Seattle International Film Festival (on May 31, 2005) and the Los Angeles Film Festival (on June 22, 2005).

Critical reviews of November upon its eventual United States release were lukewarm. Greg Bellavia of Film Threat described the film as "Run Lola Run meets Pi with a splash of Seven ... As a thriller it seems awfully familiar and has trouble establishing a voice all its own", but added "Harrison and company manage to create one of the strangest romantic films out there and for their attempt at the offbeat deserve to be recognized." The New York Daily News was more negative in its summary of the film, labelling it a "convoluted and unsatisfying psychological drama." Mark Holcomb, reviewing for The Village Voice, said the film was "less compelling the more apparent its solution becomes. But before the foregone conclusion surfaces about halfway through, its disparate, unnerving components are mesmerizing." F. X. Feeney of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "it never becomes a mystery, like, say, Mulholland Drive, or even The Sixth Sense (despite the gimmicky magnitude of its final reveal)", while the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it "a low-watt reworking of M. Night Shyamalan and David Lynch."

Scott Tobias wrote, "with each successive trip back to the scene, things only become murkier and less compelling, lost in pretentious symbolism and obvious visual signposts"; Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun made a similar criticism, saying, "Benjamin Brand's script is a puzzle without a satisfying solution." Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, who drew comparisons between the film's narrative and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of dying model, argued "answers would be beside the point. Any other explanation, for example a speech by the psychiatrist or the cop explaining exactly what has really happened, would be contrivance. Better to allow November to descend into confusion and despair ... does not bargain and does not explain." A review in Entertainment Weekly identified the film as "an homage to the work of David Hockney: Just as Hockney assembles smaller, overlapped Polaroids that don't necessarily make sense into a big picture that does".

Marc Mohan of The Oregonian dismissed the film as "a post-Memento, mess-with-your-head thriller that thinks it's much cleverer than it is", but commented that Courteney Cox "doesn't embarrass herself" in her role, while The Hollywood Reporter felt that she was "as convincing as she could possibly be." Mark Holcomb, however, said Cox's demeanor "suggests impatience rather than depression," and F. X. Feeney thought "Cox’s performance is too muted to vitally illuminate this woman’s agony". Others such as Walter Addiego (San Francisco Chronicle) believed the film was a conscious decision on Cox's part to "establish movie credibility after the megasuccess of Friends".

Most praise in reviews was directed towards cinematographer Nancy Schreiber's work on the film. Scott Tobias said the film "makes the most of its visual limitations;" Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle commented that it was "soaked to its noirish core in some fine cinematography." Kirk Honeycutt proclaimed Schreiber "the movie's real heroine, as she dramatically meshes the real with the surreal, creating different looks and emotions for each segment through light and color," while Jack Mathews wrote, "I suspect that it was her work—perhaps alone—that changed "November's" fate from a direct-to-video release to a brief first run in theaters."

In its first weekend of release in the United States, November grossed $21,813 at eight theatres, and it debuted at number sixty-three on the box office chart. It peaked at number fifty-nine in its second weekend (aided by its expansion into nine more theatres) and generated $192,186 in ticket sales over twelve weeks. It was originally slated to enter wide release in late summer, but Sony Pictures Classics chose to expand the film into no more than 27 theatres (in its sixth week).