Sally Potter's 'Yes' is a movie that is impossible to feel lukewarm about - you will either love it or hate it.
The synopsis of the plot centers around the blooming relationship which takes place between 'She' and 'He', two characters played respectively by Joan Allen and Simon Abkarian. She is an Irish-American woman caught in a mediocre marriage with a husband that she feels no longer holds any passion for her. She happens upon He, a Lebanese surgeon who flees his country to escape certain persecution only to end up in a new country as a cook.
The story is philosophically narrated through the eyes of 'The Cleaner', magnificently played by Sally Henderson, who witnesses dirt of both literal and metaphoric kinds throughout the context of the film.
It's important to note the background of this film - Potter began writing her screenplay in the days following the attacks of 9/11 as an attempt to artistically underscore the differences of disparate cultures, and the effects of Love and the ability to render each other blind to those differences. It was not intitially her intent to write the play in verse, but she attests that the verse simply came out 'in torrents'.
The basis of the film rests on the understanding of what the film attempts to do - show the struggle and differences of communication between lovers whose backgrounds are so culturally diverse. In this, the stilted moments (and there are a few) become theoretically more reasonable simply because the audience struggles with the same thing in the viewing.
The passion is unmistakable. There is a breathlessness and deep sense of chemistry throughout the film, which is made all the more romantic from the implication of verse. I say implication, because it is not read as prose, but as dialogue so that the immediate pentameter is not present as a metered effort. I felt this made the film almost hyperfamiliar in that not being always aware of meter brought far more of a focus to the dialogue, even while occasionally that underlying pattern made itself consciously clear. After viewing it over wine and cheese with some close non-literary friends, most of them conceded they were not aware the dialogue was written in verse at all. Potter freely admits that she likes it when people recognize the pentameter - and she likes it when they don't.
Cinematographer Alexei Rodionov's sumptuous use of color and flow renders an element of fire and passion to the work, and performances by all actors are stellar. Not so much a movie as an event, for the sheer boldness of its poetic vision - a feat well achieved, and then some.
Yes - The Movie
Lisbeth Cheever-Gessaman
