by Robert Alstead

The politics of love

Yes is a love story quite unlike any other. It will especially appeal to those who believe that the spoken word never went out of fashion. Borrowing from the rich literary tradition of Shakespeare, John Donne, Alexander Pope, et al, it explores deep emotions and poses burning metaphysical and political questions through the witty exchanges of two lovers, spoken in iambic pentameter. According to Sally Potter, she began writing the screenplay immediately after 9/11: “I felt an urgent need to respond to the rapid demonization of the Arabic world in the West and to the parallel wave of hatred against America… instinctively I turned to love and to verse.”
Using verse instead of dialogue might have come across as a rather artificial device, even in a full-blown romantic drama such as this, but instead, writer-director Sally Potter’s thoroughly modern and often raunchy script is all the more impressive for it. There is a certain formality to the language, as you’d expect, but the delivery here is much more natural than the singsong renditions of poetry you might remember from high school. The rhyming dialogue, delivered by a fine cast in the natural lilt of everyday language, provides clarity and allows for the characters’ intelligence and deeper thoughts to shine through.
Joan Allen plays a high-flying, but unhappy, molecular scientist, only referred to here as “She,” who is trapped in a loveless marriage with an aloof politician (the ever reliable Sam Neill). “He,” a debonair Simon Abkarian, first appears as a Middle-Eastern Don Juan serving tables at a banquet. There, he notices She’s distress, flirts with her, and makes a date. As one line goes, “conversation is an aphrodisiac,” and a passionate affair, as wordy as it is physical, develops between the two.
At first, He bursts onto her frozen existence like a life-giving sun. Until he sickened of the violence and left to become a cook in London, He was a surgeon in Beirut. As the clandestine romps continue, the lovers’ conversation turns on their differences. She, an American of Irish extraction, is no stranger to loneliness and says she understands the pain of his exile. However, after He has a confrontation at work, effectively portrayed through a series of sweary couplets with other kitchen workers, a chasm develops between the two. One could read the relationship as a love story or as an allegory of two sides struggling to come together - East and West, Christian and Muslim, the have and the have-not – against the creeping influence of negativity.
Some areas of the story are hazy, such as She’s responsibilities toward a self-absorbed, teenage stepdaughter. Joan Allan is a powerful emotional presence, but Potter’s focus on She’s internal life, with frequent interior monologues, means frustratingly scant coverage of her relationships. The narrative arc is not always a smooth one, and in one instance, a memorable scene in a Belfast hospital with She at the deathbed of a beloved, leftie aunt, seems awkwardly tacked on.
Visually, the film is striking with unusual camera angles emphasizing the artfulness of Yes. Stark sets convey the emptiness of She’s life outside of the love scenes, which, by comparison, abound with luscious food imagery and colour. She’s dull kitchen could be dressed for a Brechtian play; I couldn’t see a single kitchen implement on the sideboards. When She and her husband sit down to the evening meal, it is as if they are sitting as subjects for a still life painting.
I haven’t even mentioned She making a videotape message to God. Or the pixyish cleaning maid who talks in metaphysics about the durability of dirt. For all its strangeness, the film brims with fierce intelligence. With the recent bombings in London, and the escalating carnage in Iraq, it is a timely reminder to live for yes rather than no.

Robert Alstead, who also writes for iofilm, is currently making a documentary about cycling called You Never Bike Alone.