Yes (2005)

Memorable, crazy movie

As Good As It Gets

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Several reviewers mention Shakespeare... but what I thought back to, while watching this mesmerizing film was Dylan Thomas. Sally Potter is really his heir.I missed this film in the theater because a friend who saw it didn't know what to make of the poetry, and was put off by it. The idea of such a film is audacious, but I was afraid it would terribly difficult to pull off, and likely come off like some kind of stunt. I was SO wrong. I had completely forgotten about the film by the time I pulled the DVD off the video store shelf.Within the first few minutes I was totally focused and delighted. Occasionally I had trouble understanding the accents, but that got easier as the film went along. If it was only a stunt, then it would still be little more than just that, but Sally Potter has something strong and beautiful to say, and the two leads (along with the wonderful Shirley Henderson as the chorus) illuminate Potter's words before our eyes. This is strong stuff, the stuff of life. Watch it with your eyes, your ears and your mind.

I found the trip to Cuba unconnected with the rest of the film, not pertinent to what has come before and not congruent with the characters, their idiosyncrasies or backgrounds. The Cuban trip stems out of background reminiscences during the dying aunt sequence and, to me at least, is completely uncalled for. First world (the "she" character certainly qualifies as such, at least) traveling to Cuba seems apt to happen out of just plain tourism or out of revolution-inspired soul searching (hardly the case in the family background of the "she" character), the reasons behind "she"'s trip are inconclusive and unconnected, as I said, with everything that has come before save for the dying aunt's reflections.Unless someone caught a different reason in the plot I overlooked ...

YES is watchable, and obviously Sally Potter's "labor of love", so I gave it a 7, but that's because I'm kind. The dialog of this movie is entirely in verse. Speaking/writing in verse creates some heavy expectations of/in a movie's audience, emotional, and perhaps spiritual expectations. Shakespeare could get away with it, his verse generating a certain ancient resonance of universal Truths transcending, yet underscoring, an individual's petty self-concerns.But in Yes verse creates false gravitas. The "adulterous" love affair doesn't seem all that scandalous, sorry to say, nor portentous with broken sexual suppressions: the newly "liberated" lovers will be sure to suffer for, at last, breaking taboos and having their moist FUN.Some powerful "moments" in Yes, yes, and potentially it was evolvable into a great movie—-but that didn't happen: *Obligatory interludes in southern regions, over-stewed in style, style never a substitute for deep content, *Been-there-done-that jogging in the sun—-filmic foreplay for the fluidic reunion, *Herkyjerky camera, *An unintelligible whispered soliloquy in Irish brogue—-making a case, as long as the film-makers took such care to deliver the precious verse, for optional English subtitles, *Char-women making direct "contact" with the audience with no emotional justification for their domestic pontifications, which seemed (2me) incongruous.The lovers' reconciliation was meaningless (2me) because I didn't care that they had broken up. Actually, when they, or rather he, the petulant putz, broke up, I felt: Good riddance!--who wants a man, a doctor no less, who twiddles his germy mustache while preparing people's food!

A lovely and challenging film, wonderfully acted. Complex people leading complex lives and wondering what it all means. Past experiences intrude and haunt present relationships. Lovers caress the present, yet are conflicted by their historic obligations to others and to the values they carry into the relationship. But this is a movie in which you understand the electric attraction of these two characters, who should never have even spoken, let alone found each others. And--I think this is simply an amazing bit of craftsmanship in this day of overblown special effects--words of love and conflict are spoken in iambic pentameter so seamlessly that the viewer barely is aware of it. Not many films are so successfully erotic and political at the same time. It is a gem.