YES is watchable, and obviously Sally Potter's "labor of love", so I gave it a 7, but that's because I'm kind.
The dialog of this movie is entirely in verse. Speaking/writing in verse creates some heavy expectations of/in a movie's audience, emotional, and perhaps spiritual expectations. Shakespeare could get away with it, his verse generating a certain ancient resonance of universal Truths transcending, yet underscoring, an individual's petty self-concerns.
But in Yes verse creates false gravitas. The "adulterous" love affair doesn't seem all that scandalous, sorry to say, nor portentous with broken sexual suppressions: the newly "liberated" lovers will be sure to suffer for, at last, breaking taboos and having their moist FUN.
Some powerful "moments" in Yes, yes, and potentially it was evolvable into a great movie-but that didn't happen: *Obligatory interludes in southern regions, over-stewed in style, style never a substitute for deep content, *Been-there-done-that jogging in the sun-filmic foreplay for the fluidic reunion, *Herkyjerky camera, *An unintelligible whispered soliloquy in Irish brogue-making a case, as long as the film-makers took such care to deliver the precious verse, for optional English subtitles, *Char-women making direct "contact" with the audience with no emotional justification for their domestic pontifications, which seemed (2me) incongruous.
The lovers' reconciliation was meaningless (2me) because I didn't care that they had broken up. Actually, when they, or rather he, the petulant putz, broke up, I felt: Good riddance!--who wants a man, a doctor no less, who twiddles his germy mustache while preparing people's food!
The dialog of this movie is entirely in verse. Speaking/writing in verse creates some heavy expectations of/in a movie's audience, emotional, and perhaps spiritual expectations. Shakespeare could get away with it, his verse generating a certain ancient resonance of universal Truths transcending, yet underscoring, an individual's petty self-concerns.
But in Yes verse creates false gravitas. The "adulterous" love affair doesn't seem all that scandalous, sorry to say, nor portentous with broken sexual suppressions: the newly "liberated" lovers will be sure to suffer for, at last, breaking taboos and having their moist FUN.
Some powerful "moments" in Yes, yes, and potentially it was evolvable into a great movie-but that didn't happen: *Obligatory interludes in southern regions, over-stewed in style, style never a substitute for deep content, *Been-there-done-that jogging in the sun-filmic foreplay for the fluidic reunion, *Herkyjerky camera, *An unintelligible whispered soliloquy in Irish brogue-making a case, as long as the film-makers took such care to deliver the precious verse, for optional English subtitles, *Char-women making direct "contact" with the audience with no emotional justification for their domestic pontifications, which seemed (2me) incongruous.
The lovers' reconciliation was meaningless (2me) because I didn't care that they had broken up. Actually, when they, or rather he, the petulant putz, broke up, I felt: Good riddance!--who wants a man, a doctor no less, who twiddles his germy mustache while preparing people's food!