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Reviews



"Within the first minute this film had me in its grasp, sitting, literally, on the edge of my seat, unable to take my eyes or ears off the screen. I was not prepared for such an intense experience, had never expected it. I didn’t move or say a word throughout, and was without words after. No film since The English Patient has moved me that way, and Yes was even more intense. Rarely do I find a film so perfect in every corner. The language poured into me like a river. Nothing needs explaining. Heart and mind were equally provided. Even now words fail to convey the emotion. I love this film, and will see it many times."
Brian Young, Port Townsend, Washington

"What a daring, beautiful, intelligent, hopeful and sensual film you have made. Every layer of it is absolute brilliance.  This is the film that the world needs at this moment. It is a confrontation of so many of the problems that the world is facing and could easily have been cynical and harsh, but you have filled it with hope and beauty. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being such a daring and true original."
Kyle Barton, Dracut, Massachusetts
kyleb2285@hotmail.com

"If you want to see how Shakespeare would have worked if he had been been a contemporary of ours, you'll love YES. It is lyrical, tragic, beautiful. Potter is able to do something that's very difficult: demonstrate how love can be "crossed" by global events; that is, how global events, happening miles away, affect us at an intimate level. Of course, in true Potter style, tremendous strength comes from the women in her narratives--they hold everything together. Science, women, love, transgressions, class, cultures and races all come together in a complex and beautiful way in YES. I highly recommend this film to you--but see it twice!"
Hector Vila, Middlebury, Vermont
hvila@middlebury.edu

"The film touched me with its depth and honesty and, as I watched the closing scene weeping, I felt my soul escape from my theater seat in to the realm of possibility. We all have a certain amount of time on this planet, let's fill it with being true to ourselves, love, and above all - peace. I am thankful for this film, it is a gift of love from Sally Potter to all of us."
Sandra Keller, Seattle, WA
skeller2@hotmail.com

"Exhilarating .... I've never seen a film which felt so much like thought and life. It reminds me why I want to become a filmmaker: because this medium can be personal as a poem, yet encompass global, even universal questions. I can't think of any work which has done so with more bold, exquisite mastery than YES."
Julia Zelman, Madison, NJ
leaena@gmail.com

"To speak of the world in all its terrifying chaos with such heart and beautiful words, sounds and images is what we all must want art to do. This film cries and heals. It is received like water to the parched spirit."
Doug Shaeffer, Chicago
dougshaeffer@yahoo.com

"A film so powerful, so complete, and so beautiful. It touched me like no other film in many years. I cried, as did many others in the audience. I raised the hand to express my feelings when Sally did Qs & As, but there were too many other hands."
Anna Vronskaya. Washington D.C.
annavmail@yahoo.com

"The verse was amazing. It was almost half an hour into the film before I even realized what I was hearing."
Nicole Opyr, North Carolina
opyr1974@hotmail.com

"The acting is perfect. Joan Allen has never been better. I think this is the first film that has used her abilities 100 percent. No one else could have done it. Simon Abkarian matches her. The dynamic is utterly believable."
D. Zak, Washington, D.C.
drz1983@cs.com

"Sally's film made me cry so much because I knew every single word in that script. I felt it in my heart before! So I observed the crowed thanking Sally for her work...I waited until the last person to shake her hands, and before I had a chance to say anything she came to me, maybe because she saw me, a young guy, crying...I told her that she had made me believe that it is still worth it to be human....I didn't even know what I was saying.. I was too moved."
Miguel Silveira, Chicago
migool16@hotmail.com

"YES was my favorite film at Telluride, and profoundly moved me as few films have. I loved the  expressionism, the colors, the experimentation with frame rate; everything.  This blended perfectly with the poignant but simple music and the sound design, which often sounded like another instrument in the musical composition. The verse (which was unbelievably beautiful) added yet another element of sound, creating an acoustic experience I have never heard attempted in any other film. These elements alone make this film wonderful, but with the addition of the superb acting and compelling story, this film has no rivals."
Lisa Franek, San Diego
lisad_01@msn.com

"I watched YES in the Istanbul Film Festival and it touched me so deeply. I just want to thank you. While I was watching the film, lines saying "I know everything about your culture, but you do not even know a word from my language" affected me so much. Maybe because I am a Turkish woman (a third world country citizen) who knows a lot about European culture and will have to introduce her own culture all her life long. It is good to know there are people in the world who at least guess what you feel. It gave me hope and strength.  Thank you."
Selime Buyukgoze, Istanbul
selimeb@gmail.com

YES - WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

"YES is one of the best movies of the yea!..The sex scene in the restaurant is the most erotic scene I've seen in the movies."
Roger Ebert, "Ebert & Roeper"

"Cause for amazement and celebration!raises the bar for audacity in British film"
Jonathan Romney, "Independent on Sunday"

"Bold, vibrant and impassioned, YES is the work of a high-risk film artist in command of her medium and gifted in propelling her actors to soaring performances."
Kevin Thomas, "Los Angeles Times"

"Potter plunges right into the heart of what concerns us all right now.  Strange and brilliant."
Peter Bradshaw, "The Guardian"

"Ultimately, "Yes" is a life-affirming film, its title an emphatic choice of life over death, of love over hatred. Its gentle lyricism warms the viewer with the forgotten blush of love's first sigh, while providing enough backbone and intelligence to survive the harsh realities of the world around us. If 9/11 really has "changed everything," then "Yes," with its timeless romance reminds us life and love go on."
Ali Jaafar, "The Daily Star", Lebanon 

"YES is sublime! Sally Potter has gambled heavily and the bet has paid off magnificently."
Andrew Sarris, "The New York Observer"

"Beautiful, sensual and sexy"
Cosmo Landesman, "Sunday Times"

"Potter's finest film yet, a delightfully funny, touching and tenderly erotic romance for a post-9/11 world!. a real treat."
Geoff Andrew, "Time Out", London

"A bold and passionate movie"
Peter Aspden, "Financial Times"

"A stunningly original drama....politically aware and intensely intimate....it's as if Potter has found the language of pure emotion and put it in on screen"
Karen Durbin, "Elle"

"Intelligent, touching, deeply romantic"
Philip French, "The Observer"

"Daring breadth and ravishing style!!its unique marriage of form and function expands the possibilities of cinema and deserves to be savoured. Fascinating, sensual, and dizzyingly brilliant, YES is a must-see film"
Peter Canavese, "Groucho Reviews"

"Joan Allen is amazing in Sally Potter's YES. And director Sally Potter is amazing in the way she makes her amazing"
Roger Ebert, "Chicago Sun Times"

"It's as if Ingmar Bergman, William Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss had collaborated on an antiwar project"
Desson Thomson, "Washington Post"

"Joan Allen's central performance is sensuous, chameleonic, lit up with beauty inside and out from Alexei Rodionov's attentive camera"
Geoff Brown, "The Times", London

"A stunning epic about a grand passion whose volcanic eruptions cast a lurid light on the collision of male and female, Muslim and American....you haven't seen anything like it"
Tim Appelo, "Seattle Weekly"

"Potter's versifying....deftly underlines the film's rhyming patterns of roles and relationships"
Jessica Winter, "The Guardian", London

"The performances are unanimously supreme"
Andrew Sun, "Hollywood Reporter"

"An excellent vehicle for a resplendent Joan Allen....it is a pleasure to see a movie that openly strives to make its audience think"
Peter Brunette, "Screen International"

"YES was one of the most profound movie experiences at this year's Telluride Film Festival....it leaves you weeping at its splendid demands"
Lisa Kennedy, "Denver Post"

"Exquisitely crafted, masterfully acted, Sally Potter’s new little miracle makes it easy to say YES"
William R. Newcott, "AARP The Magazine"

"YES is a hauntingly beautiful experiment without parallel in the history of cinema. Potter's finest film to date, and one of the best of the year, it manages to be both positively life-affirming and profoundly melancholic at the same time. How could anybody say no?"
Anton Bitel, "Movie Gazette"

"A wonderful film -- brave, funny and moving"
Michael Ondaatje, author "The English Patient"

"I loved this film....it's a work that is intensely emotional, politically relevant and psychologically astute"
Tom Brook, "Talking Movies", BBC WORLD

"Not just one of the most beautiful but also one of the most meaningful films you’ll see this year."
Andrew Copestake, "Gay Times"

"Courageous and challenging, its rejection of simplistic filmmaking and thinking make for a striking example of affirmative action art."
Leigh Singer, "Hotdog Magazine"

"A visually impeccable and conceptually intriguing film that poses one of the most volatile questions of our time - can two fundamentally different cultures work through their historical biases to achieve a deep and mutual respect? - and optimistically answers in the affirmative." Holly Willis, "LA Weekly"

"Potter's anachronistic rhyme schemes tumble forth with an out-damned-spot verve that rages against irrelevance"
Laura Sinagra, "The Village Voice"

"A breathtaking visual adventure that doesn't seek to replicate the surfaces of the visible world or trudge through the steps of some familiar narrative or another. Instead, it tries to create the haunted, magical space of cinema, which exists somewhere between the outside world and the innermost temple of our consciousness.  It reminds us, among other things, that while all movies are constructions, the best are closer to being cathedrals than airports."
Andrew O'Hehir, "Salon"

"YES unspools in clean, lucid scenes of near-spartan simplicity-proving definitively that complexity of message need not require an equivalence of execution"
Jeannette Catsoulis, "Indiewire"

"The film's title is also a reminder of Molly Bloom's incantatory litany at the closing of James Joyce's ``Ulysses.'' Like Joyce's monumental novel, Potter's fine, if somewhat more modest, achievement is both a work of art and a celebration of art's power to redeem the world. Say yes."
James Verniere, "Boston Herald"

"Since THRILLER and the widely acclaimed ORLANDO, writer-director Sally Potter has been known as a pioneer filmmaker. But none of Potter's previous formidable accomplishments quite prepare you for the extraordinarily intricate splendours of YES, easily her masterpiece to date. The central action, set in contemporary London involves a successful scientist locked in a passionless marriage, and conducting an intensely sexual affair with a Lebanese immigrant worker. But this sturdy dramatic situation is only the beginning. Potter, in true Joycean fashion, ('Yes' is of course the last word of Joyce's Ulysses) departs freely from plot, creating a series of brilliantly choreographed poetic meditations on such topics as life at the cellular level, the metaphysics of dirt and the invisibility of those responsible for cleaning it up, the ever-deepening violence between the Muslim world and the West, and the eternal dance of antagonism and desire between the male and female. And don't think the term poetic is being used lightly. All of the dialogue and interior monologue is written and performed in superb Audenesque rhyming verse. Potter's astonishing mixture of heady intellectual speculation and gut-wrenching erotic passion gives us the first authentic movie-heroine for 21st Century cinema."
Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival

"Sally Potter has written a bold, inspired and inspiring script: a libretto and a poem, it fuses the visual imagery and emotional drama of her powerful love story with exceptional lyric intensity. The rhyming dialogue is wonderfully strange and engaging; it heightens the characters’ feelings and exchanges, and brings to the flow of the film a vital musical pulse, quickening the many witty asides, deepening the sorrows in a story that understands very well the pains of humiliation, loss, and death. With YES, Sally Potter shows how powerfully film can handle contemporary political and erotic issues without acquiescing to the pretended transparency of ‘reality’ film conventions. She takes risks, as gracefully as a high diver; with this passionate and witty libretto, an intrepid personal vision has triumphed."
Marina Warner, Author

"Thank you so much for bringing YES to Harvard. The film is staggeringly brilliant, and I want desperately to see it again. It's the most provocative post-9/11 cinematic response to the vilification of the Middle East and the Arab world I've seen. It is a deeply, and infectiously, optimistic work."
Professor Lucien Taylor, Film Study Center, Harvard University

"It is almost impossible to overstate how good Sam Neill is in this picture. Every moment he is on screen elevates YES to a state of compulsive watchability."
Cinematical

"Sally Potter directs an incandescent Joan Allen in a globe-hopping romance between an Irish-American molecular biologist (Allen) and a Lebanese surgeon turned sous-chef (stage actor Simon Abkarian), whose humoring of her during her husband's (Sam Neill) dull dinner party blossoms into an adulterous liaison. The lovers become each other's "secret country," stealing embraces in hotel rooms and orgasms under cafe tables, until their relationship disintegrates in a moment of cultural misunderstanding. Potentially off-putting devices -- such as the maid's direct-camera-address, one-woman Greek chorus on germs and heartbreak, and the delivery of most of the dialogue in rhyming couplets -- instead enhance this lovely yet unsparing examination of two people from very different backgrounds shedding the dead skins of their past in a wary post-9/11 world. The woman's visit to her aunt's (Sheila Hancock) deathbed is a transcendent moment, recapturing the tearful joy of Molly Bloom's "yes" soliloquy and evoking a female "Ulysses"."
Frako Loden, "SF Weekly"

"Mr Abkarian's performance is virtuosic!..he wraps his voice around the poetry with such supple command that the subtly stylized language becomes a dimension of his character, his exile, and passion and hunger for life flowing out of him like a song."
Karen Durbin, "New York Times"

"The screenplay reads as beautifully as... well, a poem."
"Publishers Weekly"