Save Me
No doubt, there's something intriguing about seeing
Jason Isaacs in a dress -- a little green sequined
number -- given that his last U.S. movie outing was as
the awful British colonel chasing down Mel Gibson in
"The Patriot." But delightful as it may be to see the
ever-engaging Isaacs just so, it doesn't go nearly far
enough to excuse sitting through the rest of Sweet November.
The problem is not that Isaacs isn't wonderful,
because he is, as well as funny and sharp. The problem
is that he's playing Chad, the Gay Neighbor character.
Chad is carefully designed as a way to "flesh out" the
irresistibly quirky and delectable Sara Deever
(Charlize Theron). Silly me -- I had imagined that the
Gay Neighbor was already passe. But here he comes
again, a device most useful in movie romances (or even
thrillers -- recall the Gay Neighbor in "Single White
Female"), as support and offset for his zany gal pal,
so that she looks positively wonderful next to him,
open-minded and generous, yes, but also relatively
conventional (that is, straight), properly attractive
in her dresses and properly behaved compared to him.
Then again, the Gay Neighbor may actually be the least
cliched element in this particular movie, which lifts
from many sources, ranging from old Bette Davis movies
to Love Story, where women are sacrificed so that
their men might learn important life lessons.
Perhaps most unfortunately, Sweet November is
opening just months after last year's woeful Autumn in New York -- the two movies' plots are so similar
that you might be forgiven if you worry that maybe the
makers of Sweet November aren't getting out enough.
But I'm exaggerating, of course. In Autumn, Winona
Ryder had no Gay Neighbor. And Sara doesn't make ugly
hats.
Rather, Sara is some kind of animal person. She has a
van with dogs painted on it, and I think she grooms
pets, or walks them, or saves them from the street and
finds them new homes. This is essentially her plan for
Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves), whom she meets when
they're taking a test to renew their drivers' licenses
and he tries to cheat off her but she gets busted
instead. Unable to drive her van and furious with him
for being such a jerk, she nags him until he agrees to
give her a few rides around town for the month until
she can take her test again. Why she decides to adopt
and fix Nelson is a little unclear, except that he is
so plainly in need... of something.
Nelson is an egomaniacal, money-obsessed advertising
exec (sort of the same guy Nicolas Cage played in The Family Man), established in Sweet November's first
few moments as a jerk of gargantuan proportions: rude,
careless, and mean to his co-workers and his
girlfriend. It doesn't take long before he's fired and
dumped, turns of fortune that leave him vulnerable to
Sara's charms. These include her quaint wardrobe (she
wears scarves, big sweaters, little dresses, and
clunky boots, rather like Drew Barrymore in Mad Love) and just-too-adorable game-playing (she
blindfolds Nelson in her apartment and giggles when he
falls over the furniture). That said, it's clear in
that Hollywood way that her charms are primarily based
on the fact that she is glamour girl Charlize Theron
in thrift-store drag -- stunningly beautiful meets
endearingly peculiar.
One of Sara's enchanting idiosyncrasies is that she
takes in lost men for a month each and transforms
their lives (apparently, sex with her is amazing!).
Nelson, she informs him, is "November." Soon enough --
and quite ridiculously -- this grumpy guy falls in
love with her and decides to change his life to be
compatible with hers. At this point, the expected
other shoe drops, and Sara informs Nelson that she
can't marry him. You've seen this much in the trailer,
where she's looking very pale, red-eyed, and ill as
she says this, and thankfully, the advertising
campaign has not been coy about the film's basis in
tragedy. It appears that the central lesson to be
learned by Nelson, before he can go on his way after a
month of sex and eating ice cream with Sara, has to do
with having respect for one another person's choices.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few more cliche
moments to get through before that lesson is complete.
Though director Pat O'Connor has revealed a light
touch in the past (in 1995's Circle of Friends),
this film is more on the order of 1997's Inventing the Abbotts, perhaps less unwieldy but equally
predictable.
Sweet November must overlook that Sara's own choices
actually do affect other people -- say, Chad, who is
painfully loyal as can be -- in order to make you feel
all right that these choices are all about Nelson's
life education. And as we know all too well, there's
nothing like a dying girlfriend to teach men a thing
or two about priorities. One sign of Nelson's learning
curve is that he decides to quit hanging out with his
colleague and supposed best friend, Vince (Ally McBeal's Greg Germann, typecast as a sniveling
weasel-guy), and tells a super-rich snoot/potential
new employer (Frank Langella, only wasting his time in
one scene) that he "doesn't like" him. Nelson's moment
of transformation is as corny as they come -- as he
lays down his napkin and strides valiantly from the
upscale restaurant where he's offended the rich snoot,
the camera looks up at him: he looks so tall and free
and grand!
His decision to dedicate himself to a happy, loving
life with Sara reflects all those solid "values"
dispensed by mainstream media as "natural" and
"right." The fact that Nelson can only make such a
decision because he is wealthy enough to not have to
work for a while -- a long while -- is only
incidental. He's a better man because of his love for
this quirky girl, who is, it turns out, just a means
to that end.
