Yes

Sally Potter has in my view made a masterpiece.

To challenge every issue from racism to religion to cultural difference, let alone to the big question, the what's it all about question, and all in one film is astounding but to do this with such daring, the rhyming verse, structure, cinematography, musical score is nothing short of genius. Joan Allen is remarkable as She. Her beauty is second only to her delivery of the some of the most intelligent and profound verse that I have ever heard. Shiela Hancock's death speech sits on its own as an inspired piece of writing. There are so many great moments in this film, there is no point in trying to list them, but do look out for the wine bar scene!

Potter has reminded me why film is great.

Thank you Sally Potter.

I saw this film at the Telluride Film Festival and cannot wait to watch it over and over again. It was by far the festival favorite for everyone I talked to (minus a few teenage boys).

Sally Potter does a wonderful job of turning what could be a cliché story about a white woman falling in love with a man from the middle east into a socially, sexually, and emotionally conscious film.

The style itself is truly Potter with breathtaking cinematography that plays color and costume together in a well choreographed filmic space.

The use of verse throughout the film only adds to the plot and the characters' intensity.

All I can say is go see it, you will not be sorry. 10/10

I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival but I had not seen any of Sally Potter's previous films prior to this and mainly saw it because of Joan Allen. Yes is a film with Joan Allen and Sam Neill and directed by Sally Potter. It is about a woman who is in a loveless marriage who has an affair with a Lebanese chef who was a surgeon in Beirut. Shirley Henderson plays the cleaner who acts as narrator and sort of Greek chorus to give background and opinion. I didn't like this film but I think women, in general, will. The acting is good especially Joan Allen and Simon Abkarian (apparently this was his first major role in English, I could not tell he was that good) but slow paced with some artistic shots (shots through water or glass or some obstruction because in real life we don't always have the perfect angle and things are not always clear). Most of the dialogue was in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. If you've seen Sally Potter's other work and liked it, then I think you'll like this. It is definitely different and Joan Allen was gorgeous but more for the art house crowd who appreciate a Dutch angle or the lens obstacles or the fact the film speed was off. There was deliberate slowing or disjointing of the frame speed in several scenes with her and her lover. As if the film was being shown at 22 or 26 frames per second or time was passing differently (which could have been a case of trying to catch the human perspective where time sometimes seems sped up so an hour goes by in a blink of an eye or a moment can seem to last forever). While most of the audience loved it, I think the average guy would be bored by this film. Having said that, there are several layers to this film and may improve with additional viewings

I was tempted to do this comment in iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets, but somebody from the "New Yorker" has already done it, and of course I would have run the risk of doing an even worse job than Sally Potter has.

Not that this is such a bad film – it's different from the normal run of romantic comedies. At times it becomes quite didactic as "He" asserts the Muslim philosophical position and "She" replies for the secular West. The dying Ulster communist Aunt's story is also an unusual ingredient. Even the more conventional elements – the alienated husband (Sam Neil), the empty affluence, the troubled teenager (Stephanie Leonidas), are deftly handled. I say "romantic comedy" because the film ends like one, but it could have equally ended as tragedy. "He" and "She" are both missing something, and find it in each other, only to discover that love does not always conquer all. One could blow one's brains out. But then one can always high-tail it to Cuba instead.

This is a very artful piece of film-making with some very clever camera-work and adroit use of music, but we still have a very ordinary story. Joan Allen as "she" does manage to transcend the material and make us care about her character, which is quite an achievement as the character is a beautiful middle-class Irish-American ice princess scientist stuck in a dead marriage whose only real passion is in what's at the other end of her microscope. It's interesting how she manages to appear so radiant, 10 years younger in fact, after her first roll in the hay with "He".

"He", the French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian, comes across to start with as a bit of a cliché, the handsome charming feckless foreigner. He is not helped by the aforesaid iambic pentameter, which was not designed for foreigners speaking English. He has to utter one of the most insincere-sounding pick-up lines I have ever heard: "If I was your husband I would be so jealous of your beauty I would not leave your side". As we see more of him, a serious side emerges, an educated Muslim who sees a lot wrong with the West and not much with his own society, despite its inability to live in peace. This he blames on the West. However, the dialectic is sidelined by the plot line, which as suggested above, winds up on a Cuban beach.

The novel "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf was a pretty weird property, and Sally Potter produced a weird and wonderful movie from it. Her "Tango Lesson" was semi-autobiographical, well produced and absorbing. This movie is ambitious – "let's see if we can make a romantic comedy about the clash of civilizations and the meaning of life" and although visually fascinating it not surprisingly doesn't quite make it. It has its moments though – Maid Shirley Henderson's disquisitions on the nature of dirt to the camera, Sam Neil's guitar miming to an Eric Clapton number and the restaurant orgasm to name a few. Sally Potter still has the ability to find a different angle on existence.

The most imaginative narrative film in the last two years? Better middle-aged romance than Something's Gotta Give and Must Love Dogs? YES! In Yes, Sally Potter, having established herself as not one of the usual directing boys with her wildly creative Orlando, has her characters speak in iambic pentameter, which, if I remember my English literature classes well enough, was the style used by Shakespeare because it approximates ordinary speech.

Why use iambic pentameter in a contemporary film? Actually, if it weren't for the rhyming, most of us would not identify the meter beyond just beautiful cadence by professional actors. But because this is an intricate tale of a mature woman in a lifeless marriage finding a man who gives her a reason to be happy, the meter adds grace and elegance to what neo-cons could label as "sin." The arguments about the beauty of life and the human body, along with a maid discoursing on dirt, are made to sound like philosophical discourse by Plato at his nearest park.

When Allen's "She" discovers through her aunt that we want our whole lives "things we don't need," the film takes another direction from love to a communistic conclusion about wealth, in Cuba no less. That's what's exciting about Potter's agenda: She seems to have so many thoughts about birth, love, and death that the film bursts with the energy of a first date with an interesting, very verbal, very sensual human being. When "She" has her date in a restaurant, "He," her new love, stimulates her under the table in an almost elegant takeoff on the "Harry Meets Sally" scream.

That "She' was born in Belfast and "He" in Beirut is Potter's way of universalizing the clashes our culture seems to proliferate these days. The director could be faulted for trying too much, for being too heavy handed in her metaphors, but better that overreaching than no reaching at all.

What Potter's aim is with the maid who comments to the audience about the universe of microbes beneath a seemingly clean sheet is a challenge, as are the multiple times service people such as cooks and waiters address us. I suspect Potter is emphasizing the need to pay attention to the little things of life, including marginal workers. Indeed, at one point the need to live each moment fully stands front and center. I can agree with that.

The eternal "Yea" overcomes the "Nea."