Avis des critiques

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.

Alongside Sebastián Lelio's A Fantastic Woman (2017) and My Happy Family (Nana and Simon, 2017), Yes was also one of a number of films that provided mature explorations of what the face of female desire looks like on screen. Yes navigates this through sensual imagery and a bold colour palette but perhaps more radically, through talking.

All the dialogue, which Potter wrote, is in rhyming iambic pentameter, ten syllables to a line, apart from a few direct declarations with eight syllables. Far from a gimmick, this is the ideal way to convey Potter's poetic intelligence and her feelings about the contemporary world. Moreover, the dialogue is delivered with such skill by the actors that it remains expressive without ever seeming mannered or show-offy.

The characters never sound as if they're reciting poetry, and the rhymes, far from sounding forced, sometimes can hardly be heard at all. What the dialogue brings to the film is a certain unstated gravity; it elevates what is being said into a realm of grace and care.

Not all of the film is consistent. The subplots concerning Allen’s family and friends lack vitality, but the real false notes are struck by Potter’s shaky, slo-mo-infected over-direction. "Yes" didn’t need such trickery — she should have had more faith in her excellent actors and superb script.

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... Potter is unafraid of letting herself getting carried away.

"Yes" is not just a movie, in other words, it's a poem. A bad poem. There is no denying Ms. Potter's skill at versifying -- or for that matter, at composing clear, striking visual images -- but her intricate, measured lines amount to doggerel, not art. Her formal ingenuity... is yoked to ideas of almost staggering banality, and she sacrifices the seriousness of a group of superb actors on the altar of her own intellectual vanity.

Amazingly for a film so teeming with ideas, “Yes” unspools in clean, lucid scenes of near-spartan simplicity-proving definitively that complexity of message need not require an equivalence of execution... Rarely has a cinematic love affair benefited from such insight and intelligence.

One of the most impressive and multi-layered explorations of the international fault lines made terminally apparent by 9/11... A major work by one of Britain’s most consistently intriguing, ambitious and fiercely independent film-makers.

While the unconventionally filmed "Yes" doesn’t fully realize all of its artistic ambitions, its depiction of romantic passion resonates with a genuine feeling that can’t be dismissed.

["Yes"] ultimately has nothing of any real depth or profundity to say, but a thousand self-consciously complex ways of saying it... [It] is the type of purely intellectual construct that, even when it works, inspires most audiences to say “No.”