...Or how Nadav Lapid started yet another world war with a lateral tracking shot)
Starring people who scream, dance, bleed, and occasionally breathe.
And Pierre, the director with experimental diction— a man whose stutter has become a visual style.
“Uh… do we… do we just… let it roll?”
— Pierre, during the Cannes screening (before he vomited in his tote bag).
Synopsis (or the long version of a collective misunderstanding)
Y., a broke, masochistic musician,
and Jasmine, a luminous yet exhausted dancer (except when it comes to humiliation),
decide to turn their art into a chic public service of submission.
Between two cocktails dripping with decadence, they symbolically lick the boots of power until death, boredom, or accolades come knocking.
And then, miracle of miracles!
They’re asked to compose the new national anthem.
Kind of like asking Patrick Bruel to rewrite “La Marseillaise.”
Result: a baroque opera of sweat, ego, and pseudo-political rants.
Yes, Lapid does Lapid,
but this time, he cranked the delirium up to 11.
Review: A slap in the face, but with a washcloth.
From the very first scene, it’s clear: Lapid is not here to tell a story. He’s here to exorcise.
The camera shakes, the music screams, the actors roll in sangria like it’s the blood of their illusions, while Pierre, our hero in the background, watches it all, dumbfounded, and mutters:
“Uh… it’s… it’s conceptual, right?”
Yes, Pierre. It’s even too conceptual.
Each shot is a metaphor that thinks it’s smarter than the audience.
Each line feels like a coded message from God.
And each scream seems to yell: “LOOK HOW CINEMATICALLY TORTURED I AM.”
Halfway between performance art and a filmed panic attack, YES tosses the viewer between ecstasy and nervous laughter.
It’s pure Lapid: an aesthetic slap that first caresses your cheek, then bites your jugular.
Ah, Pierre.
The stammering director, apostle of the “uh” and prophet of the failed shot.
We find him, lost in the wings, repeating his lines like a scratched record:
“Yes… no… well… yes… no but… yes.”
He embodies the entire philosophy of the film.
The articulated chaos.
The doubt incarnate.
The “yes” said with the intonation of a “save me.”
Some say Lapid wanted a tragic sidekick.
Others think Pierre just forgot his lines.
But who cares? His hesitation has become the soul of the film.
Act Two: Desert, Dust, and Symbolism Overdose.
Lapid moves all these characters to a biblical desert because, apparently, filming human degradation indoors was too easy.
The sand flies, the camera spins, the actors scream at God, capitalism, and the weather.
And Pierre, in a corner, still tries to adjust his shot:
“Uh… the hill… should we take it from the side, right? Or… uh… head-on?”
A silence.
Then Lapid screams:
“Head-on, Pierre! It’s a metaphor for national guilt, damn it!”
It’s theatre, it’s cinema, it’s vaudeville on amphetamines.
The film ends as it began: in sublime, absurd chaos.
Everyone’s crying, everyone’s screaming, everyone’s making love to the concept of the “wounded nation.”
Pierre, in the post-credits, concludes:
“Uh… I… I think we’re done, right?”
And the viewer, dazed, gets up, half-fascinated, half-traumatized.
Because yes, YES is a film that grabs you by the throat, slaps you, talks to you about art and politics, then leaves you in your underwear in the desert of your own cynicism.
Lapid has struck again.
And Pierre, stammering and magnificent, has survived to tell the tale.
By Giulia Dobre, Paris.
October 5th, 11h45.
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