November

Sara is a student of medicine in Lodz in Poland. She suddenly becomes violent, has attacks of hysteria and begins to act irresponsibly. It is as if evil forces took possession of her. The doctors are puzzled. November tells the story of a young woman who gradually slips into a state of mind that she has trouble getting out of. The film is based on an authentic case which Karwowski read about in a newspaper a few years ago.

Comment:
The plot in November takes its inspiration from one of those zesty newspaper items that perhaps are closer to myth than reality. Lukasz Karwowski's film is about a young woman studying medicine in the Polish city of Lodz, and who (like the main character in Polanski's Repulsion) gradually drifts into insanity. Karwowski's November does not in simple terms distinguish between belief and reality. That doesn't make this power· ful debut any less creepy, frightening and violent (in that order).
Karwowski has not made a regular horror movie, even though all the ingredients are there - the madness, possession, evil, and the uncertainty about where, when and how it will strike. Instead of depending on effects, Karwowski works with psychological, sexual and religious undertones. The story, which at first is just slightly unpleasant. slowly develops into a modern witch myth. But Karwowski is not portraying a bloodthirsty female monster, but a young woman who is the victim of a curse, the origin of which is not clearly explained in the film.
On one part Karwowski's film is closely tied to popular belief and medieval theology. At the same time the driving force of the story is the young woman's complex relationship to her own sexuality. In an environment where male sexuality is represented by threatening johns, degrading policemen, potential rapists and dirty old men, evil is less a theological problem than a social and psychological one.
Yet, November is a tremendously beauti· ful film, for the most part photographed in a grey twilight charged with mysticism, anguish and melancholy. The entire ambivalent emotional register that is interwoven in this film.
Cecilia Sjöholm