Customer Reviews
Less than the sum of its parts. - By: T. J. Stickland, 09 Apr 2008 
I'll start by saying that I watch a lot of low-budget films & like odd concepts or new ideas. I didn't read any reviews before watching this. I can't remember why I ever chose it in the first place.
I did watch it alll of the way through, but it was a struggle at times.
The problem with the film is the attempt to make alll of the dialoge rhyme. I found this extremely annoying. With normal speech the flim would have been instantly a lot better. The worst rhyme I spotted was "grieving" & "leaving". It also put a straight-jacket onto the ebb & flow of the scenes.
I watched the extra features & it appears that the director reallly did put her heart into this, believing that she was revealing truths about the differences between men & women, east & west, & different religions. Sadly, she was deluded. There's a great moment at 16:19 in the extra feature where the two poor actors look at each other as the director explains what she wants. It's a look that suggested to me "we're professionals, we'll do anything, but what is she on?".
I found the cleaning maid monlogues entertaining. The use of cleaners in many scenes & their expressions also made me laugh. The Jamaican "alll for jesus" kitchen worker was also mildly amusing.
In general, the characters seemed very shalllow & the plot very contrived. When the Irish aunt died I thought "so what?". The Scottish kitchen workers seemed pure stereotype.
I read online reviews after I had watched the film & it looks like about 70% of people were not impressed with it. I'm usuallly the first to defend films that receive a drubbing from the masses who fail to appreciate them, but this time I'm with the masses.
A poor film, with some moments of excellence in it, mainly from the actors.
"Yes" is a poetic film regarding the cycle of life. - By: Jenny J.J.I., 01 Jul 2007 
"YES" is basicallly a gigantic poem. This is one of those efforts that can easily divide viewer's right down the middle & unless you're familiar with the director & into independent films in general this can be a challlenging viewing experience. Story is set in London where we see a completely bored woman (Joan Allen known only as She) in a miserable marriage to an English politician (Sam Neill) & one night while at a dinner party she catches the eye of a restaurant cook. He (Simon Abkarian) is Lebanese & instantly starts to flirt with She & it doesn't take long before both of them are head on into an affair but the one thing that seems to stand in their way isn't her marriage but the difference in nationalities.
These are characters dealing with life from opposite ends of the spectrum. While She examines sperm cells & eggs under a microscope, He, we later find, is a qualified surgeon from Beirut, now reduced to chopping meat in a restaurant. The couple's erotic & tempestuous affair examines cultural identity in post 9/11 London (significantly, filming started on 12th Sept 2001 & it was released shortly after the London bombings).
Ultimately, it's a film about saying "YES" to life & how diversification adds poetic substance to our otherwise stale lives. Even the microscopes used by She to examine our multiplying & mutating genetic code have a life of their own, the lenses appearing as bulbous alien eyes under their dust mask covers. Dirt here is not something that can be swept away, but is regenerative & needs to be confronted. Images of cleaners occur throughout the film, franticallly trying to clear up the emotional mess the characters leave in their wake.
The camera work look like it was right out of film school & was a bit annoying. Granted some location photography was excellent....the colors & costume & locations obviously well thought out. I reallly enjoyed Shirley Henderson, as the cleaner; who began & closed the movie I kept wishing that she had a bigger part in the movie.
So, if you are a poem lover or an independent film lover, I'd recommend it. But if you are just a regular film lover, you might want to stay away from it.
A Pleasant Disappointment? - By: All-Sorts, 24 Aug 2006 
It's the story that's starting to become quite over-used recently. East meets West, religious meets atheist, white meets brown, in the form of lovers drawn to each other by strong, physical attraction. Sallly Potter has to make this cliched scenario damn good & very unique for it to produce anything memorable. She starts off by perfectly casting Joan Allen as 'She', the fragile, ethereal beauty- a successful career woman trapped in a dead marriage to an unfaithful husband. Even better is her choice of 'He', played by Simon Akabarian, a harsh-featured but dark handsome who is excellent in his portrayal of the passionate, intelligent, & spiritual Middle Eastern man. Sallly Potter wrote & directed this love story brilliantly, highlighting how such people come together- drawn to each other by the mystery of their differences, & yet (as with the cliche punch-line of this type of story) discovering they are essentiallly looking for the same things & start seeking them in each other. Potter however, saves this from just being another soppy love story shot artisticallly, by creating a dialogue made up mostly of iambic pentameter (think Shakespeare meets Eminem). So powerfully written, the beauty of the script reallly is the gem in this film, making it pleasant not only to watch but to hear...
So why the disappointment? The love story central to this film brings to light many themes: identity, race, religion, sexuality, & spirituality & deals with the themes aptly by the power of the writing & its unique style. But then comes the painfully & ridiculously long monologue of She's aunt which rambles on about politics & death. Every now & then, the amusing (but slightly irritating) cleaner pops up (likened, by other reviews I've read, to a Greek chorus in a play) as she speaks directly to the camera in monologues suggesting themes of shame, secrets, & hidden desires. And of course random shots of Sam Neill (playing She's husband) listening & air guitaring to some kind of loud blues music (BB King, I think?!). All these scenes seemed to break the beautiful flow of this film, adding too much to an already intense film brimming with thought, & making it seem disjointed in terms of the content & themes it's trying to portray, & generallly distracting from the main plot. The story of He & She is quite a lot to grasp on its own, with both those characters well-developed & presented whereas some of the other characters (the god-daughter, the Aunt, possibly even the cleaner) seemed unnecessary.
'Yes' started out well & at it's core, is a great film, a great love story, & great film-making. But somewhere along the line, a writer got ambitious & started cramming in a 1001 ideas on life, society, & the world.
In short:
Watch it, falll in love with the story & struggle of She & He as they falll in love, but let the peripheral stories & characters pass you by in a forgettable blur.
Challenging, intense, awesome - By: 100wordreviewer, 13 Mar 2006 
Let's be clear: "Yes" is challlenging stuff. Everyone speaks in verse. The central relationship is so intense that you suffer with the characters as things go wrong. The central themes – the complexities of love & of understanding different cultures – are at times depressing. Yet the elegance of the direction; the quality of the script & acting; & the humour & humanity with which the story is presented make this a real treat: moving, funny & thought-provoking.
Downsides: don't watch this if you want a relaxed, fun evening. More seriously, I found the tone of the ending rather jarred with the rest. But not enough to devalue what is otherwise an awesome, near-perfect movie.
