Yes Movie Review:


Sally Potter, a former dancer, choreographer, performance artist, theater director, documentarian and singer-songwriter, is best known for Orlando (1992), her ambitious version of the Virginia Woolf novel long considered unadaptable. Her filmscript for “Yes” was begun following 9/11, born of a desire to counteract demonization of the Other. As an antidote to fear and loathing, Potter “turned to love and to verse (and to humor)” -- the latter less notably -- and pictured a dark Lebanese man and blonde North Irishwoman raised in the United States, natives of strife-torn countries. After a five-minute evaluation filming, the two characters were fleshed out and subplots developed.

Although there is way too much of cinematic, and even literary, trickery, the center is simple and the result a contrast to the elaborate visual and aural sumptuousness of the “love poem” of thirteen years ago. Individuals, protagonists “She” (Joan Allen) and “He” (Armenian Simon Abkarian, in his first English-language lead) are yet universalized, a lapsed Catholic who questions the existence of God but speaks to Him about death, and an Arab whose religious beliefs are amorphous. And if diplomatic difficulties arose regarding Beirut and Havana location work, and the woman’s husband Anthony (Northern Ireland-born Sam Neill) is a British politician, still politics is not paramount and, it must be observed, the calm hero’s hundred-and-eighty about-face not justified by the single (on-screen) experience of European xenophobia.

Negatively, the self-conscious cinematography is a nuisance. So, too, are the several charwomen who briefly shrug into the camera and, particularly, the East End cleaning lady (Shirley Henderson) who opens, closes and in-between lectures us about hidden dirt, i.e., secrets, and ineradicable viruses, intimating a chain of being from microscope-small to socially, politically, cosmically large. It takes some minutes, too, to catch and penetrate the speech -- a dishwasher’s clipped Glaswegian remains Greek to the end -- and to realize that this is rhyme, loose iambic pentameter about which the actors’ instructions were to consider meaning over sound.

The tale is sensual despite a lack of naked skin -- his whispers at an upscale bar, and her reaction, are more erotic than loads of visible flesh -- but opens on a childless, terminally loathing couple. Put-upon, formal and misunderstood, Anthony philanders while molecular biologist She globetrots to conferences, indulges pouty goddaughter Grace (Stephanie Leonidas), jogs, swims, seethes. Lonely with her husband at a society dinner, she is spied and sweet-talked by a dashing dinner-jacketed man. After a day in the park, they make love in his apartment, She melting for emotional and physical attention, He attentive, funny and charming. He now slices vegetables as a cook, rather than flesh as a former surgeon in his country, which he left ten years before when fanatics threatened him for treating non-believers.

Their relationship blossoms as, cinematic distractions and all, their love grows on us and is reinforced by the daring rhyme. Further isolated by best friend Grace’s mother’s (Samantha Bond) self-pitying jealousy, She increasingly fulfills herself in the affaire. But, too quickly and unrealistically affected by a flare-up at work, He tearfully turns on pale Western complexions and wants to end it, go home to “my noble ancestry . . . my name.” A cell-phone call interrupting their parking-lot quarrel, She must leave for Ireland and her dying, freethinker, Socialist, Fidel-fan Auntie (Sheila Hancock).

Reflecting Woolf’s literary technique and Eugene O’Neill’s “Strange Interlude,” voice-overs are integrated, not as currently fashionable lazy exposition, but as thoughts that are continued aloud in conversation; obviously outside such dialogue, comatose Auntie’s voiced brogue is only in the niece’s head and urges her to go to Cuba. She will do so, after calling him in Lebanon and sending a Havana ticket. “There’s only one life, let’s seize the time.”

To Afro-Cuban and Arab music and dance, She and He will rethink, assess and find freedom as individuals. “I am me” -- before Western/Middle Eastern, Irish-American/Arab, blonde/brunet. Holding to a moment in the flow, just Woman and Man.



Donald Levit

Sally Potter takes a poetic approach with this lyrical and ethereal romance in which the characters speak in rhyme while circumstances threaten to choke their love. It's intriguing to watch, and punctuated with genuinely powerful scenes, but it's overloaded with dialog and ideology, and extremely heavy going from the start.

The story centres on an unnamed Irish-American woman (Allen), in a cold marriage to an oblivious Londoner (Neill), who strikes up a sensuous romance with a Lebanese chef (Abkarian). Once the warm glow of attraction cools down, real life reasserts itself, and the racial, political and religious gulf between them becomes a major obstacle. Meanwhile, the hired hands around them watch silently, unnoticed by their bosses, commenting on what they observe.

The message seems to be that we need to notice the people we deliberately ignore, from those we rely on right in our own homes to oppressed groups around the world. Within this a couple is trying to say "yes" to life in a world that only says "no". This is a very strong message, and an especially important one, but the film is so dense that it's nearly impossible engage with it. The wordy dialog is almost impenetrable, and the pace of the film is alternately lurching and draggy.

Potter's one trump card is Allen, who delivers yet another raw and achingly honest performance as a woman yearning to live her life, but held back at every step. Her passion contrasts vividly with Neill's steely need to control everything; both are bored almost to death. And the male-female clash between them vividly echoes the east-west/Arab-Christian divide between Allen and Abkarian, who's also good.

All while Henderson buzzes around the edges as a pixie-like cleaner, talking and eyeing the camera, observing that "dirt doesn't go, it just gets moved around". But the film's so weighed down by the overly artful style that not much gets through. We are alienated by the dull pacing and convoluted dialog and overwhelmed by the intensity of the film's many messages. In the end, it's challenging but dull.

Rich Cline

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