Starring Joan Allen, Sam Neill. Written and directed by Sally Potter. (14A) 100 min. Opens July 22.
The big news about Sally Potter's Yes is that the script is
written in iambic pentameter. Which is no biggie for a story concerning
royal succession or some mischievous fairies in a glen, but it's a
pretty daring aesthetic gambit for a film set squarely in the here and
now. Yes offers a veritable inventory of up-to-the-minute
social issues and tensions, including racism, workplace discrimination,
class struggle, scientific progress along with, perhaps in deference to
the Shakespearean overtones of the dialogue, a pair of star-crossed
lovers.
They are He (Simon Abkarian), a Lebanese restaurant
worker, and She (Joan Allen), the microbiologist wife of a clenched
London politician (Sam Neill). No proper names, then, just simple and
universal gender signifiers -- but that doesn't mean that the
characters aren't intriguingly sketched. She's affair is less a
byproduct of her stale, reciprocally empty marriage than her genuine
interest in another man who is gracious, attentive and generous. The
passion begins to curdle, however, when events bring their cultural
differences into sharp and immediate relief.
Their falling out is torrid and serious stuff, but Potter's
sense of playfulness leavens the tone. There's a wonderful turn around
the edges of the film by Shirley Henderson, as a housemaid given to
delivering winking asides while in the midst of maintaining She's
well-manicured upscale environs. Like any Shakespearean fool worth her
salt, she's wise beyond her wordplay and her observations on quotidian
matters -- like where, exactly, dirt comes from -- dovetail humorously
and ingeniously with the other, larger matters at hand. It's these
snatches of finely wrought human comedy that distinguish
Yes as more than an exercise in art-house gimmickry and elevate it into something as pleasingly affirmative as its title.