‘Yes, God, Yes’ a smart coming-of-age comedy
It’s probably more happy accident than political moment, but either way it’s nice to see some old tales told from new perspectives.
The Netflix series “Cursed” tells the legend of King Arthur from a woman’s perspective — specifically that of Nimue, the Lady of the Lake.
Writer and director Karen Maines’ “Yes, God, Yes” does something similar with a genre not quite as old as Arthurian legend but just as sturdy: the coming-of-age sex comedy.
And it’s a good one.
It’s also a smart one, which isn’t surprising — it’s Maines’ feature debut
as a director, but she co-wrote “Obvious Child.” She goes more often than not for character-revealing scenes than gross
out ones, but they’re just as funny. And she gets terrific performances out of the entire cast, especially Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler in “Stranger Things”).
Dyer plays Alice, a 16-year-old girl attending a Catholic school in … well, we don’t know what year exactly, but Alice has a dial-up internet connection and an AOL account. It’s in one of the service’s chatrooms that she inadvertently hooks into a sex chat and, despite a lecture from a priest in class earlier in the day about the evils of masturbation (eternal damnation and all that), she tentatively explores a bit.
All this is nothing, mind you, compared to the rumor that spreads about her at school, where most of the students take their faith seriously. And if they don’t, or don’t take it seriously enough, there’s the stern and threatening Mrs. Veda (Donna Lynne Champlin, so good in “My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), to keep everyone in line.
The rumor is of a specific nature, an act that Alice not only did not participate in but doesn’t even know the meaning of. If Catholic schools are good at anything, though, it’s being judgmental, so it’s not long before Mrs. Veda, along with the other students, and even her best friend Laura (Francesca Reale) think she’s perverted, and treat her accordingly.
Of course she’s not. Alice is normal, as normal as any curious and somewhat confused teenager can be. And as we learn on a religious retreat Alice attends, everyone, priests included, might do well to remember that whole judge-notlest-ye-be-judged idea.
The beauty in Maines’ script, and in the performances, is how perfectly modulated everything is. Maines clearly gets some digs in at the Catholic Church, and Catholic education particularly. It’s really funny.
But it’s neither broad nor cruel, and the performances support that perfectly. Wolfgang Novogratz and Alisha Boe, as perpetually smiling, overly enthusiastic counselors, are archetypes, certainly. But they don’t take it too far — there are believable characters in there somewhere, and Maines offers clues as to how they might have ended up a little too joyous by half.
Better still is Susan Blackwell as a gay bar owner who plants the seed of a bigger world out there beyond high school in Alice’s mind. She also knows what’s what when it comes to defining the terms of the rumor about Alice.
Dyer’s performance, however, carries the film. She portrays Alice’s understandable vulnerability — no one, particularly at that age, wants to be the subject of rumors — but also her strength, which feels every bit as genuine. She just sort of soldiers on, in the manner of all great movie characters, and if she isn’t always confident that she’ll figure things out eventually, we are.
Or we’re hopeful, at least. That makes “Yes, God, Yes” a satisfying, funny film. A blessing, you might say. Even Mrs. Veda would agree.