[after a particularly epic masturbatory emission, contributing writer and sexual deviant marrrrrrrr cools off by making a small meal and watching a sex comedy to, you know, keep the engine running. this is Midnight Movies.]
film: Yes, God, Yes (2019)
food: probably a hot dog? (aka a weiner in buns)
pre-game: comedy about a devout teen girl awakening to sex/sexuality in an extremely religious environment. don’t know too much else about it, but looks interesting and, hopefully, funny. bbl w/ the post-game report
post-game: some of the best parts of Yes, God, Yes, the semi-autobiographical teen sex comedy by first time director Karen Maine, are the early set-ups demonstrating the brutal psychological torture inflicted on young people in religiously conservative environments with regards to sexuality. there’s classroom lectures about sex only being proper within the boundaries of “one man-one woman marriage,” face-to-face confessionals, repetition of mantras about one’s own “sinful” nature, secret clubs, staged “sharings,” and of course the constant reminder that a higher power is always, always watching.
the first twenty minutes of the movie are so good at setting up the absurdity of the situation that the actual “story” is almost unnecessary, and it’s a bit of a letdown when, instead of examining the whys behind these fundamentalist environments, or even giving dimensionality to the characters enforcing them, Maine’s film is content to dismiss the absurdity as such without tackling the harder task of trying to understand it.
but maybe that’s too much to ask from a movie that, ultimately, is about an early-00s catholic school girl just trying to get off.
Alice (Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer, ably carrying) is a high school junior with a healthy curiosity about sex trapped in a social space determined to convince her she is actually unhealthy. an otherwise dutiful student, Alice is relegated to exploring sex from mainstream movies (she watches the Titanic (1997) sex scene three times) and aol chatrooms (present-day Alice is probably ecstatic with the leaps in porn technology since then).
after a false rumor about her “tossing the salad” of another boy spreads around her school, Alice finds her social status slip and is convinced to attend a secretive weekend retreat that promises to be life-changing, which, incidentally, it is. she is immediately drawn to a hairy-armed senior counselor, discovers a new use for the vibrate feature on her phone, and finally discovers how deep the hypocrisy of her authority figures runs.
the plot itself is serviceable, but starts to fray toward the end when contrivances and conventions creep in. in a moment of distress, Alice runs away from the camp and magically finds herself in a gay bar with the sympathetic ear of an Older Wiser Lesbian (or OWL™) who also happens to have been raised devoutly catholic. though slightly unbelievable, the scene is at least mechanically justified as being necessary to give the protagonist a glimmer of hope in a desperate situation. less forgivable is the Big Public Speech™ she gives later, which seems to exist purely because it is “expected” in a teen movie involving heavy themes. it’s neither the best summation of the themes nor the best example of how she learns to stand up for herself, and makes for at least one climax too many. (heh.)
despite the minor flaws, Yes, God, Yes is still rewarding, especially as a character-driven comedy, much of which is mined from Alice’s ignorance of the mechanics of sex. to wit: when HairyChest1956 declares how “wet” she is during her first attempt at cybersex, she responds, “you’re wet too.”
nor is it completely devoid of social critique: a recurring bit about how “men get turned on like microwaves, but women get turned on like convention ovens” coupled with a scene involving Alice and her affable, but selfishly obtuse, father hints at the possibility of repression as a tool in a system of patriarchal control.
but even if the satire doesn’t bite as hard as hoped, for a movie about an early-00s catholic school girl just trying to get off, it hits the right spot.
rating: a nice, relaxing wank on a lazy afternoon: an enjoyable, if not mind-blowing, way to pass the time.
