Bawdy teen comedy manages to be sweet
Raunchy comingofage comedies that satirize religious hypocrisy don’t usually leave you going, “Aw, that was so sweet and innocent.” But director Karen Maine’s first feature, “Yes, God, Yes,” pulls off that neat trick in a surprising yet natural way.
Based on her 2017 short film of the same name and, more pertinently, the 13 years the writerdirector spent in Catholic schools, the film — available through select virtual cinemas on Friday, July 24, and video on demand Tuesday, July 28 — has its contrived situations but primarily feels like lived experience. Perhaps the most persuasive element is how its heroine Alice’s erotic maturity evolves in her own consciousness rather than in the arms of others.
Alice is played by Natalia Dyer (”Stranger Things”), a teen who is not only the victim of dirty, untrue rumors at her turnofthemillennium Iowa parochial school, but also a mass of goingtohell guilt after a chance internet exchange introduces her to masturbation.
Alice’s learning environment is no help. The priest who teaches a very limited sex education class is portrayed by Timothy Simons, who also played that creep from “Veep,” so you know he’s hiding something. Plays on words such as “wet” and “tossed salad” are common student parlance when kids aren’t being ticketed in the hallways for wearing pants without belts or other provocative infractions. A typical exchange between girlfriends goes like, “Have you had to watch the partialbirth abortion video yet?” “Don’t ruin it for me!”
Dyer’s an expressive marvel as Alice navigates fear, curiosity, confusion and disgust through a labyrinth of lies. When she decides to go on a weekend retreat to salvage her soul and meet cute boys, all of the repression and hormonal seething going on around Alice gets predictably exposed for what it is.
Not in pat ways, however. Alice spends more time existentially pondering and mopping floors than she does obsessing over her new favorite thing, hairy arms, or inadvertently spying on corrupt role models (though she does enough of the latter to enliven this sometimes draggy stretch of the story). There’s also a totally wonderful bit where the girl somehow winds up in a rural lesbian bar and has her attitude adjusted by its nurturing owner (Susan Blackwell, playing a number of complex notes in a few shrewdly performed scenes).
Maine cowrote the 2014 abortionpositive dramedy “Obvious Child,” so she’s clearly no prude. Yet there’s a downright wholesomeness to the quirky, righteous way she addresses women’s commonly suppressed sexual topics. If Alice learns nothing more from her adventures than that it’s all right to enjoy the back seat scene from “Titanic” to its fullest — i.e., alone in a room with the door securely locked — how could heaven possibly object?