Barnes & Noble

This daring little indie, not widely released, tends to polarize viewers: Some find the movie passionate and provocative; others find it pretentious and self-absorbed. One thing is certain: Yes is not a cookie-cutter Hollywood movie that proceeds along formula lines and plays it safe. Writer-director Sally Potter (Orlando) obviously wanted to take chances and force her audience to think while watching this film, which comments on love, sex, religion, class, and politics in ways guaranteed to provoke strong reactions. Joan Allen portrays a poised, elegant Irish-American wife who engages in a steamy affair with a Lebanese waiter and kitchen worker (Simon Abkarian) while her wealthy politician husband (Sam Neill) pursues other interests. We learn that the waiter was once a doctor who abandoned his profession after the politically motivated killing of man he had just saved from death. Drawn to each other following a chance encounter at a formal dinner, they find it easy to get physical but more difficult to take the affair to a more intimate level. To be sure, Potter tells her story rather self-consciously; the dialogue is delivered in rhymed iambic pentameter, a rhythm found often in the works of Shakespeare but rarely in movies with 21st-century settings. And eyebrows may be raised by the ten-minute sequence in which the wife's dying aunt, an unrepentant Marxist, laments the failure of Communism and what she believes to be an unhealthy fixation on the acquisition of material goods one doesn't need. Despite the film's sometimes contrived nature, Yes compels interest by virtue of the unusually skillful performances of its two leads. Allen, in particular, is excellent; on the basis of this film and the recent Upside of Anger, she has taken her place at the head of any list of cinema's most prominent leading ladies. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

Filmmaker Sally Potter directed this artful meditation on the dynamics of the romantic and sexual relationship. She (Joan Allen) is an intelligent and gifted genetic scientist of Irish-American heritage who feels smothered in her marriage to a British politician (Sam Neill). While dining at a friend's house, She meets He (Simon Abkarian), a handsome Lebanese exile who was a respected surgeon in his homeland but now supports himself in London as a cook. He flirts with her, and She is pleased with his advances; weeks later, she contacts him, and an affair begins. However, despite their mutual attraction, He and She find it difficult to set aside their political and national differences for very long, as love and lust wage a quiet war against the conscience and the intellect. Yes also features supporting performances from Shirley Henderson and Sheila Hancock. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 043396109063
• Source: SONY PICTURES
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Français
• Time: 1:40:00
• Sales Rank: 24,055

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