November

November is the kind of film that only a literate filmmaker would endeavor to make, and Greg Harrison, in his second directorial outing, demonstrates the sophisticated craft and incredible facility with cinematic language essential to creating this riveting exploration of the fragility of the mind and existence. Reminiscent of such canonical films as Blow Up and Lost Highway, November is a totally engrossing exercise in temporal narrative, memory, and the powerful reality of images.

Anchored by a superbly subtle and restrained performance by Courteney Cox, this typically low- budget Indigent production centers around an incident that occurs at a corner store in midtown Los Angeles when photographer Sophie Jacobs (Cox) and her boyfriend (James LeGros) stop for ice cream on the way home from dinner. Waiting in the car, blissfully unaware of the robbery that is taking place, Sophie suddenly realizes that something has happened, but its too late. Traumatized by guilt and haunted by fragments of memory, Sophie tries to get on with her life, but one day an image inexplicably appears in a classroom presentation, and her whole world starts to spin.

Harrison slowly and deliberately reveals the truths hidden in this wonderfully imaginative personal drama with a skill that belies his youth but cannot cloud his importance as one of the best of an emerging generation of film artists.