Yes, God, Yes (2020)

Yes, God, Yes is the second directorial effort from Karen Maine.  Vertical Entertainment produced this film and it stars Natalia Dyer as a 15-year-old girl going through her sexual awakening while attending a very strict catholic high school.  Dyers character Alice is someone who has recently been the subject of gossip because it has been said that on a previous school trip, she “tossed the salad” of one of her male classmates.  This is a subject of concern for her as she is adamant that she didn’t do it.  While at home after school Alice is in an AOL chatroom and a guy sends her racy photos, which sparks her libido and makes her question the abstinence teachings of her high school.  Alice continues to have sexual urges to the point where she decides to go on a spiritual retreat in hopes it will allow her to figure out why she’s feeling what she is drawn to do.

I’m not at all the target demographic for this film. The thing that I like most about Yes, God, Yes is the fact that even though the performances are very stilted they are honest. That’s what you want from a film like this. You need honest performances that you believe in. Alice very much comes off like a goody two shoes. She’s very dedicated to her family and very devout in terms of how she handles her religious duties. This makes the film a much easier watch than if you had someone who cares less about the world around them.  The other characters in this film like her best friend or the priest that tries to support her with conversations about sin doesn’t really make much of an impact.  The only person that really carries this movie is Alice. This is the main weak point of the film because there’s no other characters that you can truly emotionally invest in and that’s a problem. The audience needs other characters that come across as just as relatable or just as well rounded as Alice does but there really are no other people within the film that give that same level of emotional weight as that character does.

I love the fact that the main discovery that Alice comes across is that everybody is a hypocrite. Everyone who says that sexual or moments of self-discovery are bad ends up in some way doing it themselves. One of the main leaders of the retreat a girl ends up giving a blow job to one of the other leaders of the group. The priest himself who has been chastising Alice about sin the entire movie ends up being one of the people watching porn on his work computer.  This film knows exactly what it wants to say but the visual storytelling used to say it comes across as bland and uninspired leading to a conclusion literally anyone could see coming a mile away.

Everyone goes through their own time of self-discovery and attraction but it’s not quite as awkward as rewinding Titanic to the foggy car window scene three times. That sort of experience depicted in the film is something that is specifically female that I can’t identify with. Will other girls identify with this? To be truthful, I honestly have no idea. Everything in this film comes off as a satire of what an actual girls experience would be so I don’t know if it’s something that people will find relatable. I also think that if the whole movie was played completely straight and not for a single laugh that people wouldn’t enjoy it as much so I don’t know whether this film release succeeds and trying to inform young people that it’s OK to feel whatever you feel. I know that if it were me being 18 years younger that I’m not sure the message would come across but again I’m not the target demographic.  Yes, God, yes could’ve been an amazing film but it ended up being mediocre despite having a great plot. Pray for this one.