Yes

Sally Potter's Yes premiered this evening at the Toronto International Film Festival before a 1300-strong crowd, with the director and star Joan Allen in attendance. I am so grateful to have been present at this extraordinary event (the film is still in negotiations for distribution). Yes is a love story between She (Joan Allen, stunning in the role of a lifetime) and He (Simon Akbarian). She is married (to Sam Neill, who manages to play both boorish and sympathetic), a scientist, and Irish-American, living in London - a city Potter loves to photograph and whose different, colliding cultures she conveys superbly. He is Lebanese, working as a chef in London. She meets He. Love ensues.

It sounds so simple, and in a sense it is. The film is luminous, elegant, ravishingly beautiful, subtly erotic. The love scenes feel so natural. And yet -- all the dialogue is spoken in rhymed iambic pentameter. Scenes are shot from canted angles, through glass or water, sometimes from CCTV cameras. Jump-cuts, motion blur, internal monologue, an unsettling score - all these elements challenge the simplicity of the idea of love. He and She are unnamed, but they have backgrounds, political and religious beliefs that take the narrative so far beyond the usual romantic pap of Hollywood cinema. Every frame and every gesture invites multiple viewings and multiple readings, partly for the precision and lush beauty (each city has its own colour scheme), and because so many other films and paintings are evoked (including an audacious nod to Orlando early on!) And because this is a Sally Potter film, the passion and the politics have a strain of humour. Or in this case, a frame, provided by Shirley Henderson as She's cleaning woman. Her opening and closing monologues in the whiteness of She's London house are immediately engaged, and totally unlike anything else you'll see or hear in film (at least English-language film). In fact, that's a good summary: Yes is totally unlike anything you've seen before.

Yes is possibly the most beautiful film I have ever seen.

Sally Potter began work on this film on September 12, 2001. The impact of the previous day's events can be felt throughout the film as He and She try to make sense of their lives and discuss both the meaning of life and the world around them.

Told in rhyming couplets, the comparison to Shakespeare is natural. Potter claimed that she would be thrilled if even one line of hers was as good as the Bard's. I believe much of her work is on par with his. The text is both witty and intelligent and addresses a plethora of modern day issues of conscience. The iambic pentameter flows very naturally throughout the film and is never a distraction - only a credit to the abilities of the writer! As with any Shakspearean production, the feelings and inner turmoil of the main characters are central.

The cinematography is excellent. The film is simply beautiful to watch and behold. As if the images were not enough, the music provides a perfect complement to all that goes on on screen.

Go see this movie. It is unlike any other. Everyone shines!

First off, you need to set your expectations. This is an extremely arty film. There are no explosions, chase scenes, or guns in this movie.

Instead, we have a film with metaphors, themes and relationships. There are few movies I have seen recently that attack such large and serious topics.

The major themes in this movie are God, love and politics. During the course of the movie, racism and war, terrorism and the Middle East, infidelity, atheism and Marxism are all brought on stage.

As if that weren't enough, the majority of the dialog is in rhymed verse, with perhaps occasional interjections of free verse. In fact, the entire very contemporary script has a vaguely Shakespearean feel to it, though there is no shortage of four letter words.

The entire cast of the movie is wonderful, but the centerpiece of the entire film is Joan Allen, who gives an almost supernaturally wonderful performance. The heart of the movie is a moving love story, but this is a serious romance with strong, deeply emotional scenes designed to reflect adult, rather than teenage, themes.

There are also major metaphors in the movie, such as the role of cleaning, which usually stands for an attempt to wipe out guilt or corruption, and the use of glass, and particularly glasses of water, to show the way different viewpoints distort a particular perception of reality.

If you are prepared to see a very serious, beautiful made, and extremely arty film, then this is an excellent way to spend your time. I simply loved the movie, and would probably enjoy seeing it again sometime soon. But please, don't bother to go if you are looking for something else. This is a very heartfelt and intense movie, which refuses to compromise.

I had the chance to see Yes when it in premiered at the Telluride Film Festival. I had no idea what to expect and that in turn was a good thing. Expectations more often than not ruin our perceptions of a film and that would be my advice for anyone seeing this film for the first time, do not expect to know what you are getting into. With that said, I believe this was a marvelous film because it was able to balance the seriousness of its subject matter with a nice touch of humor. This definitely was not a film for everybody and I say this because it does require one to think when viewing it and as we all know, a lot of people go to the movies to escape, not to think. Right away, the viewer will realize this is not your normal film simply by the dialogue, it was written in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets. The rhyming of the dialogue might be a turn off for some, but I found it to be quite pleasing and very humorous almost in a mature Dr. Seuss sort of way. Anyone that is a writer will appreciate the time and care and difficulty that went into writing this script. Regarding the content of this film, I will only say that everything is not always as it appears and we interpret what we see...if you can appreciate this kind of thought, then see this film. If I had to compare it to another film, which I shouldn't do, I'd say American Beauty or Donnie Darko. On a technical note, I had the chance to talk to Mrs. Potter and her producer Mr. Sheppard afterwards and they informed me that it cost less than 4 million to make this film which makes it all the more magnificent.

Not since Shakespeare's day have playwrights written entire screenplays in iambic pentameter, but writer/director Sally Potter might single-handedly start the trend again. However, it took me over a half hour to realize that the whole film was one epic poem – before then all I thought was, "This dialogue is horrible! People don't actually speak like this!" But that's the point. Poetry is not meant to imitate average speech. That's why it's poetry.

Joan Allen plays a lonely wife (whose name is never mentioned) trapped in a loveless marriage who has a fiercely passionate affair with a Muslim man from Lebanon. Because she was born in Northern Ireland (but raised, however, in America), she thinks she understands her lover's pain and suffering as an Arab man living in London. These two lovers fight about race, class, religion, politics, stereotypes, and identity, and with the recent bombings on the London Underground, this film is unsettlingly too relevant. Yes is a superb love poem that speaks volumes about what we, as a society, are afraid to mention in our post-9/11 world. But unfortunately, sitting through this film feels more like homework than pleasure.