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Now
playing at Lammele's Royal in Santa Monica
YES
Meet
Lebanese-born Simon Abkarian, costar of "Yes" with Joan
Allen and Sam Neill. In the film, Simon Akbarian—an Armenian who grew up in France and Lebanon—plays "He," a Lebanese doctor in exile, making his living as a cook. Simon Abkarian was first known for his charismatic performances in leading roles in the Greek Tragedies with the Theatre du Soleil (directed by Ariane Mnouchkine). In 2001 Simon Abkarian received the Prix Moliere (the highest accolade in French theatre for an actor) for his performance in "Une Bete Sur La Lune" (directed by Irina Brook). He has also directed several plays including an acclaimed production of Titus Andronicus (2003). YES is his first leading role in the English language on film. He recently played the male lead in a French comedy, "Le Demon de Midi" and has co-starred in numerous films in Europe and the Middle East. See Simon Abkarian Filmography.
YES is the story of a passionate love affair between an American woman (Joan Allen) and a Middle-Eastern man (Simon Abkarian) in which they confront some of the greatest conflicts of our generation - religious, political and sexual. Sam Neill plays the betrayed and betraying politician husband, Sheila Hancock the beloved aunt and Shirley Henderson the philosophical cleaner who witnesses the trail of dirt and heartbreak the lovers leave behind them, as they embark on a journey that takes them from London and Belfast to Beirut and Havana. Read Sally Potter on the making of "Yes" after 9/11. Sony
Pictures/Sony Studios, 10202 W. Washington Blvd. | map
| 310.559.5544 WHAT
THE CRITICS SAY
"It's as if Ingmar Bergman, William Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss had collaborated on an antiwar project" Desson Thomson, Washington Post "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 "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 "An especially daring attempt....to resolve the chaos of experience into some kind of formal order" A.O.Scott, New York Times "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 "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 "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 "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 "The screenplay reads as beautifully as... well, a poem." Publishers Weekly |
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