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Copley News Service
June 30, 2005 Thursday
'Yes'
by David Elliott Copley News Service
Yes to "Yes." A few more words, to confirm affirmation:
This is a He and She story, written and directed with inspiration by
Sally Potter ("Orlando"), who began this as a short film written
right after the 9/11 disaster. The romance of He and She involves Us,
for it seems to press the flow of both public and private events into
a very deep bond of feeling.
Simon Abkarian, who is Armenian, plays He, a Lebanese surgeon driven
by his homeland's strife to London, where he can only wield the blade
as a cook at a fancy hotel. She (Joan Allen) is an American scientist
with knowledge of strife because of her Northern Irish family, and on
edge because her research runs right into the abortion controversy.
She's married to a successful Englishman (Sam Neill), who is
unfaithful and can barely verbalize emotions (with funny sadness, the
husband grooves alone to blues recordings, his private vent). Fed up
and lonely, She falls quickly for the honeyed advances of He, the
unemployed surgeon who can still cut to the heart (Abkarian has some
aura of a dark-eyed Arab prince in exile).
In an audacious gamble that first nibbles our ears, as an odd
surprise, and then becomes the true music of narrative, the
characters speak in loose rhymes. Not in too fussy a way, but with a
soft pressure of melodious accent and echo (often speaking mentally,
as when She says: "I've sung the song of science, I've sung it every
day. But I could agree that's how I pray").
The effect is not rap, nor a clever afterglow of Shakespeare, but
akin to the vernacular, chatty charms of Vikram Seth's popular verse
novel "The Golden Gate." Full of finesse, a touch pretentious, it
soon seems the way that these smart hearts (and even some fairly
crude kitchen workers) must speak. It's funny and moving.
Potter combines verbal filigree with Alexei Rodionov's wonderfully
fluent and intuitive camerawork. The movie dances with chances,
including political implications. Potter made the illicit courtship
and the sex as richly alive as any we've seen in modern films; the
self-consciousnessness doesn't have the frosty manipulation that
seemed to put diagram lines between the actors in "Closer."
Abkarian, going beyond suave pursuit into touching exposure, is even
finer than he was as Arshile Gorky in "Ararat." And Allen continues
her fantastic year. She was wonderful in "Off the Map," even better
in "The Upside of Anger," and now her angular tautness is just the
instrument for the supple and often conflicted feelings of She.
Neill is movingly lost, Stephanie Leonidas as a godchild is deeply
touching, and Samantha Bond is She's cherishable friend. Sheila
Hancock as She's dying old aunt barely moves, but her long speech of
memory and longing, in Irish English voice-over, becomes the still
poetic fulcrum of the movie.
The other chief wisdom is provided, amusingly but with mounting
implication, by a canny hotel maid (Shirley Henderson). She stares
into the camera pertly, like a squirrel gazing into Buddha's eye.
This very female movie is also empathetic with men, and its sexy
candor is not depersonalizing, but spiritualizing. He is a wayward
Muslim, modern but not rootless. She professes atheism. But the world
is being rudely divided by hot believers, and for all their
resistance these urbanites want spiritual grounding.
The crisis of the face-off of East and West, very post-9/11 but
echoing (like an old rhyme) back through the British Empire, is
delicately incarnated. He and She are never Its. They remain people,
not symbols.
The affirmation of "Yes" is in its worried, wondering love for
everyone. The poetry spreads from the dialogue into everything. It's
a great film.
A Sony Pictures Classics release. Director, writer: Sally Potter.
Cast: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Sheila Hancock, Samantha
Bond, Stephanie Leonidas and Shirley Henderson. Running time: 1 hr.,
40 min. Rated R. 4 stars (out of 4.)
June 30, 2005 Thursday
'Yes'
by David Elliott Copley News Service
Yes to "Yes." A few more words, to confirm affirmation:
This is a He and She story, written and directed with inspiration by
Sally Potter ("Orlando"), who began this as a short film written
right after the 9/11 disaster. The romance of He and She involves Us,
for it seems to press the flow of both public and private events into
a very deep bond of feeling.
Simon Abkarian, who is Armenian, plays He, a Lebanese surgeon driven
by his homeland's strife to London, where he can only wield the blade
as a cook at a fancy hotel. She (Joan Allen) is an American scientist
with knowledge of strife because of her Northern Irish family, and on
edge because her research runs right into the abortion controversy.
She's married to a successful Englishman (Sam Neill), who is
unfaithful and can barely verbalize emotions (with funny sadness, the
husband grooves alone to blues recordings, his private vent). Fed up
and lonely, She falls quickly for the honeyed advances of He, the
unemployed surgeon who can still cut to the heart (Abkarian has some
aura of a dark-eyed Arab prince in exile).
In an audacious gamble that first nibbles our ears, as an odd
surprise, and then becomes the true music of narrative, the
characters speak in loose rhymes. Not in too fussy a way, but with a
soft pressure of melodious accent and echo (often speaking mentally,
as when She says: "I've sung the song of science, I've sung it every
day. But I could agree that's how I pray").
The effect is not rap, nor a clever afterglow of Shakespeare, but
akin to the vernacular, chatty charms of Vikram Seth's popular verse
novel "The Golden Gate." Full of finesse, a touch pretentious, it
soon seems the way that these smart hearts (and even some fairly
crude kitchen workers) must speak. It's funny and moving.
Potter combines verbal filigree with Alexei Rodionov's wonderfully
fluent and intuitive camerawork. The movie dances with chances,
including political implications. Potter made the illicit courtship
and the sex as richly alive as any we've seen in modern films; the
self-consciousnessness doesn't have the frosty manipulation that
seemed to put diagram lines between the actors in "Closer."
Abkarian, going beyond suave pursuit into touching exposure, is even
finer than he was as Arshile Gorky in "Ararat." And Allen continues
her fantastic year. She was wonderful in "Off the Map," even better
in "The Upside of Anger," and now her angular tautness is just the
instrument for the supple and often conflicted feelings of She.
Neill is movingly lost, Stephanie Leonidas as a godchild is deeply
touching, and Samantha Bond is She's cherishable friend. Sheila
Hancock as She's dying old aunt barely moves, but her long speech of
memory and longing, in Irish English voice-over, becomes the still
poetic fulcrum of the movie.
The other chief wisdom is provided, amusingly but with mounting
implication, by a canny hotel maid (Shirley Henderson). She stares
into the camera pertly, like a squirrel gazing into Buddha's eye.
This very female movie is also empathetic with men, and its sexy
candor is not depersonalizing, but spiritualizing. He is a wayward
Muslim, modern but not rootless. She professes atheism. But the world
is being rudely divided by hot believers, and for all their
resistance these urbanites want spiritual grounding.
The crisis of the face-off of East and West, very post-9/11 but
echoing (like an old rhyme) back through the British Empire, is
delicately incarnated. He and She are never Its. They remain people,
not symbols.
The affirmation of "Yes" is in its worried, wondering love for
everyone. The poetry spreads from the dialogue into everything. It's
a great film.
A Sony Pictures Classics release. Director, writer: Sally Potter.
Cast: Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian, Sam Neill, Sheila Hancock, Samantha
Bond, Stephanie Leonidas and Shirley Henderson. Running time: 1 hr.,
40 min. Rated R. 4 stars (out of 4.)