Positive Thinking
YES DAY Jennifer Garner reunites with Miguel Arteta for affirmative family fun.
I Miguel Arteta is a director who knows something about saying yes. His filmography is spectacularly varied, having said yes to pitchblack indie comedy Chuck & Buck, Trump-era tragedy Beatriz At Dinner, experimental lesbian romance Duck Butter and warmhearted family fare in Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
“I want to be a moving target and never be pinned down,” he tells Teasers. “I love that model from the golden era of Hollywood where you’re asked to do a musical one day, a comedy the next, a melodrama the next, I love it all!”
For Yes Day, he reunites with Alexander star Jennifer Garner, who he’s known since the ’90s and openly adores: “She’s seen the best of me because she brings the best of me out.” The driving force behind the film, Garner herself does ‘yes days’, where you say yes to every request from your children, as a fun, positive, family-bonding experience. “This movie came straight from her heart,” smiles Arteta. “When she asked me to do it, I had to say yes because we were going to do it for the most beautiful reason. To add positivity to children’s lives.”
Garner plays Allison Torres, a formerly positive and impulsive woman who, along with her husband Carlos (Edgar Ramirez), has fallen into a parenting rut of “no” and overscheduled predictability. After hearing about ‘yes days’, they decide to shake things up by embracing the power and possibility of ‘yes’. The unapologetically light and sunshiney outlook of the film is something Arteta thinks is much harder to achieve than it looks. “It’s easy to be funny and be very dark and sarcastic. It’s harder to be funny and have an optimistic point of view.”
This was also a chance for Arteta to put a happily multi-ethnic family on the screen. “I always have an agenda,” he laughs, “but I haven’t had a chance to do a Latino blended family before.” The Torres’ eldest daughter is played by rising star Jenna Ortega (who recently joined the upcoming fifth instalment of Scream). In Yes Day, she has the unenviable task of playing a rebellious teenager who doesn’t lose the audience by being a brat, but Arteta knew she was up to the task. “I saw her audition and I just had to get her in the film. She’s so organic, effortless and intensely smart without having to show that off. That’s a sign of a real movie star; she’s going to have an exciting career.”
More than anything, Arteta hopes that by releasing on Netflix, Yes Day brings joy to families across the globe. “A contagious sense of optimism,” he beams. “That’s what the world needs right now.” LL
ETA | 12 MARCH / YES DAY STREAMS ON NETFLIX FROM NEXT MONTH.