Yes (2004)

masterful

a truly masterful and original way of telling a love story in between the clashes of culture, language and separation by holy wars. A clear telling of what happens when cultures collide and love is in the mix, and which one will come out the winner in the end. Sally Potter is a master storyteller with a unique eye for showing the other side of relationship power struggles, there is so much of this missing in cinema today. August 27, 2008

Masterpiece!

This movie is simply a masterpiece! The actors are all very believable and passionate. We fall in love with Joan and Simon from the very beginning. We learn about love, deception, loss, poetry, language, the list is neverending. Thank-you Simon for telling us how the East feels about the West. You are simply touching and your speeches are overwhelming. Please see this movie, give it a try. Let the love and characters set you free:) May 25, 2007

YES DVD SALLY POTTER

Quite the most intelligent DVD I have seen in years. Written immediately after 9/11 it is a moving love story, with witty disalogue. This is real life, political as we all live politics, whether an MP in London, a low wage earner washing up in a big kitchen hotel, or a struggling immigrant. It defines what it is to be human, whoever we are, in a rivetting short moment in the two main characters lives. surprisingly the dialogue is in iambic poetry, but this rarely intrudes as it is spoken so well, and it adds an intensity to the speech. It also has a sort of Greek chorus in the form of a cleaner who sees all without herself being seen or acknowledged. The results is deeply philosophical and makes one think about a huge range of issues,war,love, marriage, immigration, racial prejudice, inequality, teenage difficulties, etc. etc. Camera work is highly creative, unusual angles and even CCTV footage. This is essential viewing .the only problem is `I could only buy Area 1 DVD and that cannot be played in the UK. This is crazy as the film is about London. My early copies were Area 2, so they are about, and well worth the searc h. May 12, 2007

So just what am I agreeing to here?

Two of my favorite films are ones by Sally Potter, _The Tango Lesson_ and _Orlando._ So it was pretty much a given that at some point, I'd sit down and take in Yes, a film about two nameless people who encounter one another, and lives get turned upside down.

She (Joan Allen) is a research scientist, married to an icy politician, Anthony (Sam Neill), who only seems to find any sort of emotional release in the blues. When we first meet them, they're off to a dinner party, all very formal, and he warns her not to make a scene. Once there, She wanders into the dining room, where a very elegant mideastern man in a tuxedo (Simon Abkarian) has a passing conversation with her.

It's clear enough that they are both interested in each other, enough to where She hands Him her business card on the stairs. A phone call, a meeting, and soon, enough, the interest and conversation soon lands them both in bed together. It's a slow, tumultuous affair, lasting from spring blossoms, to the Christmas season.

Others, from His co-workers in the restaurant where he is a chef, and Her family and friends, suspect that something is up, but no one can quite put a finger on it. His coworkers engage in the nature of God and religion and of course, women, over dirty pots and dishes, and she goes running and out and about with her sister Kate (Samantha Bond) and her niece.

Her world is the sparse, sterile one of the London flat, all whites and bare walls, crisp white couches and linens, while His is full of colour and textures. And She, under his careful touch and words, slowly begins to bloom.

But things start to unravel, first for Him, when an argument with a fellow employee results in a drawn knife, and for Her, when her husband can't even summon up the guts to engage in an verbal fight with her. And that animosity expands to the He and She, with her being drawn away to a death in her birthplace of Belfast, and he runs to his homeland of Beruit.

No, not everyone is going to like this one. The themes are very adult, it's mostly a plotless film about two people who find each other, lose one another and then come again full circle. Everyone in this one are extremely lonely, each one existing in their own little microcosm, and rarely can see beyond themselves if at all.

In fact, the only ones who seem to get what things are really about are the various charwomen in the film, especially the one who cleans She and Anthony's immaculatte London flat (Shirley Henderson), who whispers up commentary and secrets as she gazes directly at the viewer. All of the cleaning women in this film, who silently push about their brooms and mops and brushes, seem to be saying can you believe these fools?

And frankly, that's where the film starts to disintegrate. While it's composed of beautiful cinematography and images, the dialogue is of rather insipid poetry -- nice, but rarely inspiring -- there are times when it is delivered in such muddled sound that I had to really crank up the volume to hear, or just guess at what was being said.

That's a big problem. Too, there isn't a plot beyond of He and She's encounters, and the unraveling of their lives until they have to make choices. Sadly, the film only has subtitles in French, so I couldn't even resort to using the subtitles to figure out the story. Another problem was that I was left wondering if the story was about discrimmination and the question of terrorism through His eyes, or her general alienation to everything for Her. Secondary characters appear, give soloquies, then vanish into the background, and don't do much except to spread more confusion in their wake.

Sadly, there really ought to be more on the DVD to help the viewer along. The only audio track is in English, and the only subtitles are in French; there is a photo gallery of images in the film, and a little featurette on the making of the pivotal scene in the film, where the relationship shatters in the face of reality. Nice, but there could have been much more, what with the level of DVD technology these days.

Sally Potter both directed and wrote the script for this one, and while I really admire her courage in seeing her vision through to the end, it's a murky one at best, and a snoozer at worst. Not for everyone, but if you have the patience to sit through it to the end, you might find it an interesting 'slice of life' film.

Recommended, with three and half stars rounded up to four. March 25, 2007

I hear you. Tell me more.

Ms Potter is trying to teach us that adults solve their problems of expressing their feelings via dialogue rather than by acting them out/in (what adult children do). "I hear you .. tell me more."
Her macho stiff husband didn't want to talk (act in). The dishwasher and the cook/doctor want to fight with weapons (act out). She keeps saying, "Hold the phone, how did we get here, we all want the same things for the same reasons, let's talk" (my paraphrase). To stay bound to our old systems or to cut the cords and grow up. That is the question. January 7, 2007

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