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‘Yes’ Review: Nadav Lapid’s Blistering Attack on Israeli Nationalism is an Effectively Blunt Instrument
Firebrand director Nadav Lapid is on seething form in 'Yes!,' about a couple split by politically opposed priorities in the wake of October 7.
No one was expecting Nadav Lapid to hold back in his first feature since the events of October 7, 2023: The Israeli filmmaker has long been cinema’s most vigorously expressive and outspoken critic of government policy in his birth country, with films like 2019’s “Synonyms” and 2021’s “Ahed’s Knee” bristling with fury and shame over Israel’s national military culture and artistic censorship. Played in ping-ponging modes of morose containment and deranged vitality by a superb Ariel Bronz, our hardly-hero is Y (the same cryptic name, though not the same character, as the protagonist in “Ahed’s Knee”), a pianist and performer introduced in the middle of a frantically choreographed Eurodance production number that sees him variously fellating a baguette, dunking his head into a punch bowl, bobbing for cherry tomatoes in a swimming pool, and extravagantly making out with dance partner Yasmine (Efrat Dor). Whether an ensuing dance battle with a horde of Israeli military leaders is officially part of the routine or not, it seems to regularly happen anyway, with Yasmine quietly begging her husband to let them win — before they supplement the night’s earnings with some three-way sex work for a frisky elderly client in a cavernous mansion with the taxidermied heads of her relatives mounted on the walls.
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