Yes, God, Yes | Karen Maine | July 24, 2020
Yes, God, Yes comes from director Karen Maine, making her feature-length directorial debut based upon her short film of the same name (she also wrote 2014’s Obvious Child). Starring is Stranger Things‘ Natalia Dyer, playing a 16-year-old named Alice, a Catholic school high schooler brought up to be a good Catholic girl. And up to this point, she has willingly played the part.
But teenage hormones are a powerful thing, especially when one day a curious Alice innocently enters an AOL chatroom after school (oh, early 2000s how we … miss you?) that soon causes her to have a sexual awakening of sorts. Initially, she feels shame and guilt about unintentionally stumbling upon this raunchy material but her urges are stirred and she soon discovers masturbation and understandably has a lot of excitement and guilt.
She comes to terms with this in the most awkward fashion on a religious retreat with her best friend Laura (Francesca Reale) and various members of her school – including chaperones Nina (Alisha Boe), Chris (Wolfgang Novogratz), and Father Murphy (Timothy Simons). All are associated with the school, which becomes a problem when a raunchy rumor starts floating around that Alice is a slut. This causes her retreat to be anything but fun and causes her to question not only her devotion to religion but sexual repression and plenty of the familiar tropes of coming of age dramas.
Maine tells her story with an efficient 88-minute run-time, which leaves plenty of extraneous fat in the confessional. While it doesn’t manage to go in a totally new direction for young adult coming of age tales, the religious aspects bring enough new elements to play with that allow Yes, God, Yes to differentiate itself in enough ways.
Yes, God, Yes extracts plenty of humor in the ridiculousness of the retreat but also uncovers the inspirational elements of finding oneself and how no matter how devoted you may think you are, you are still naturally sexual beings whether you like it or not. You feel for Alice who seems to just find herself constantly treated poorly by nearly everyone around her, even though they have plenty of things to repent for themselves.
Yes, God, Yes rests on the performance of Dyer who is able to channel the spirit of a young soul while also able to channel the conflicted inner turmoil of a woman discovering her sexual side. It takes Maine’s steady-handed direction to level the playing field and make this a grounded story of self-discovery when a lesser director could have toed a line that would’ve brought it to the sort of place where the early 2000s coming-of-age films often went.
While at times it feels slight and has some of the cinematic shortcomings of a first-time director, there is enough here that provides an entertaining and moving viewing experience, such as a standout scene where Alice gets some well-needed advice from a bar owner played by Susan Blackwell.
Yes, God, Yes enough laughs and heart to provide a tale that still feels plenty timely and relevant, even if its story is set in pre-9/11 times. If it helps many young women come to terms with their sexuality and self-discovery in a way that is comforting or inspirational, then it certainly did its job.
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