Por Toda Minha Vida

Sweet November is a charming enough quirk fest than can sometimes grate, cause a chuckle, and move you in the span of 5 minutes. You're always sort of on guard when you watch this movie. It all starts with a stuffy box company worker named Charlie (singer Anthony Newley) gets pushed out of his driver's test when a quirky young woman named Sara (Sandy Dennis) asks him for some answers. Instead of being appalled and angry at this woman, Charlie hangs out with her for a little while and discovers her to be another in a long line of Manic Pixie Dream Girls who could only exist in Hollywood fiction. They agree to continue to spend time together only for Charlie to realize that Sara wants him to be her man of the month. She has a habit of dating men for a month, trying to improve them and then releasing them into the wild. But what will happen if they fall madly in love?

Sweet November sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Sandy Dennis' performance ranges from shrill to charming to bizarre to adorable to heartbreaking and back again. It's an odd performance, but I can't say I've ever seen anything like it. Anthony Newley does better than expected as Charlie, but there is something off puttingly smug about him at times that makes you want to slap him.

What starts out as an amusing rom com tries to go into melodramatic weepie territory towards the end and it doesn't really work. I'll give them this much - at least it doesn't end with an unearned death to tug at the viewer's heartstrings. In fact, the film ends on an impressively mature and thoughtful note that took me by surprise.