a review by J. Robert Parks
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Writer / director – Sally Potter
Director of photography – Alexei Rodionov
Editor – Daniel Goddard
Production designer – Carlos Conti
Producers – Christopher Sheppard and Andrew Fierberg
Sony Pictures Classics. 100 minutes. Rated R.
STARRING: Joan Allen (She), Simon Abkarian (He), Sam Neill (Anthony) and Shirley Henderson (Cleaner).
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Sally Potter’s new movie, Yes, opens with a cleaning lady breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the audience. She’s talking about dirt and cleaning and the strange relationship between someone who makes a mess and the person who cleans it up. The minimalist room and the maid’s uniform suggest a hotel room. But when Joan Allen walks from behind the camera, it’s clear that we’re in someone’s house, and a nice one at that.
Allen plays a character whose name we never hear and who’s credited only as “She.” She is an accomplished research scientist whose marriage to a wealthy businessman is a mere formality. In an early scene, she’s in a limousine with her husband (a nice performance from Sam Neill) when she berates him for having an affair “in our house.” The affair bothers her less than where it took place, as if the dirt of his immorality might stick to her. At the formal occasion where the couple are going, She meets He. He (played with genuine charisma by Simon Abkarian) is a waiter, a cook, and a swarthy immigrant. In other words, he’s everything that she and, more importantly, her husband aren’t. He’s also much more forward than she’s used to, but she appreciates the attention and eventually gives him her phone number.
What follows is a passionate affair told through discreet but sensual sex scenes and brief conversations. Potter traces the traditional arc of such encounters: the early, almost adolescent infatuation, the torrid sexual encounters, the post-coital laughing and dreaming, the talking and asking, and the eventual frustration that ensues when two different people try to understand each other. In this case, the difference involves much more than gender and sex. It’s about class, it’s about nationality, it’s about religion.
Those are big topics, and Potter does her best to do justice to all of them. A number of scenes take place in a kitchen, where He converses with three different cooks, one of whom is an African immigrant while the other two are lower-class Brits. The four men are united by their working class backgrounds, but they’re much more divided by their religions and nationalities. Their discussions are often playful and funny, but even those can devolve into mean, violent arguments. Meanwhile, she has various conversations with her peers: a teenage goddaughter who’s obsessed with being beautiful, the goddaughter’s mother who competes with her over who has the hardest life (though most of the world would kill to be in their shoes), and her husband who would prefer not to talk at all.
As if that weren’t enough, Potter also introduces the themes of religious war (she’s from Belfast, he’s from Beirut), leftist politics (her mother is an unreconstructed Socialist who dreams of visiting Cuba), and that original idea of cleaning. The maid, played by Shirley Henderson with a fluttery voice, is only the first of many cleaning folk we encounter, and Henderson herself functions as a chorus that reappears every so often to comment on the drama. And to top it all off, the dialogue is spoken in rhymed verse. Yes, every character is speaking in meter and rhyme.
The fact that Yes doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own pretensions is testimony to Potter’s skill as a director as well as the top-notch cast she’s assembled. Allen and Abkarian speak their lines as if they were Shakespeare’s rather than Dr. Seuss’s, so the couplets aren’t too distracting. Furthermore, Allen has rarely been better–her combination of vulnerability and patrician dignity is perfect for the role–and that’s saying a great deal. But I liked Abkarian even better. He captures the whole range of emotions with glorious nuance. His pursuit of her in the early scenes is winning, his debates with his co-workers are powerful, and his accusations near the film’s end are brilliant. The movie’s keystone scene takes place in a parking garage, as He and She argue over how they perceive each other. I won’t give anything away, but Potter elaborates beautifully on her earlier ideas of power and imperialism.
Still, my friend Garth remarked the next day that he thought the movie had too many ideas and not enough characters, and he might be right about that. Especially if you’re not attuned to the weighty issues Potter is exploring. Yes has too much specificity, too much finesse to be labeled an academic exercise, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it became a popular subject for grad school papers. On the other hand, it also has romance, gorgeous sets and scenery, and fantastic acting. If you don’t mind some Marx and post-colonial theory with your romantic drama (or better yet, enjoy that combination), Yes is the movie for you.