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Entertainment Weekly
July 8, 2005
YES;
Another sexy outing from the incandescent Joan Allen
Lisa Schwarzbaum
YES
Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian
R, 100 mins. (Sony Pictures Classics)
In Sally Potter's Yes, an American research scientist meets a
Lebanese chef at a London dinner party. She's an unhappy, pale beauty
and he's a soulful, swarthy hunk, and the two fall upon each other
with ravenous desire. She's a scientist, lost in a sterile marriage
(her husband is a cheating British diplomat), and he's a chef, lost
in a country not his own (at home he was a surgeon). She is played by
Joan Allen, radiantly, maturely sexy, and he is played by
Armenian-Lebanese actor Simon Abkarian, ditto. The two speak in
verse--iambic pentameter, to be precise, the rhythmic beat that
echoes that of hearts--even when chopping parsley, making love,
arguing about religion and culture and geopolitics. And after an
East-meets-West, old-world-meets-new- imperialism quarrel (about
religion, culture, geopolitics), the two cry oui, oui, oui all the
way home. Or rather si, si, si: For reasons as unexplained as any in
this flushed, impetuous folly, reconciliation takes place in that
lovers' Eden called Cuba.
Exotic, no? Potter, the writer-director of Orlando and The Tango
Lesson, has said she made Yes as an artistic response to 9/11--her
own idiosyncratic affirmative, as it were, in the face of a
cataclysmic negative. And she sets herself such a high formal level
of difficulty--and achieves images of such sensual intensity--that
there is a fascination to be had merely in swooning along with She
and He. Allen actually glows with arousal; Abkarian boasts black hair
so romance-novel photogenic that he's excused from wearing a hairnet
in the restaurant kitchen. Parse the philosophy behind the spill of
words, though, and you'll find intellectual jumble, junk. Better to
nod to Yes as a drowsing chant than take it seriously as a statement
of global concerns. C+ --LS
July 8, 2005
YES;
Another sexy outing from the incandescent Joan Allen
Lisa Schwarzbaum
YES
Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian
R, 100 mins. (Sony Pictures Classics)
In Sally Potter's Yes, an American research scientist meets a
Lebanese chef at a London dinner party. She's an unhappy, pale beauty
and he's a soulful, swarthy hunk, and the two fall upon each other
with ravenous desire. She's a scientist, lost in a sterile marriage
(her husband is a cheating British diplomat), and he's a chef, lost
in a country not his own (at home he was a surgeon). She is played by
Joan Allen, radiantly, maturely sexy, and he is played by
Armenian-Lebanese actor Simon Abkarian, ditto. The two speak in
verse--iambic pentameter, to be precise, the rhythmic beat that
echoes that of hearts--even when chopping parsley, making love,
arguing about religion and culture and geopolitics. And after an
East-meets-West, old-world-meets-new- imperialism quarrel (about
religion, culture, geopolitics), the two cry oui, oui, oui all the
way home. Or rather si, si, si: For reasons as unexplained as any in
this flushed, impetuous folly, reconciliation takes place in that
lovers' Eden called Cuba.
Exotic, no? Potter, the writer-director of Orlando and The Tango
Lesson, has said she made Yes as an artistic response to 9/11--her
own idiosyncratic affirmative, as it were, in the face of a
cataclysmic negative. And she sets herself such a high formal level
of difficulty--and achieves images of such sensual intensity--that
there is a fascination to be had merely in swooning along with She
and He. Allen actually glows with arousal; Abkarian boasts black hair
so romance-novel photogenic that he's excused from wearing a hairnet
in the restaurant kitchen. Parse the philosophy behind the spill of
words, though, and you'll find intellectual jumble, junk. Better to
nod to Yes as a drowsing chant than take it seriously as a statement
of global concerns. C+ --LS