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Sally Potter began writing the script for this film on September 12, 2001 in direct response to what had happened the previous day (Potter, 2005). She wanted to make a film of hope, optimism, and love in a situation full of demonization and hatred. Set in London, Yes is a love story between a man from the Middle East, referred to simply as HE (Simon Abkarian) and a woman from the West, called SHE (Joan Allen). Being nameless, HE and SHE seem to be representatives of cultures, vehicles for political vision, and archetypes of East and West. But their romance makes them, not only vehicles, but also individuals. The political is thus held in tension with the personal. At first their passion and attraction give them a reprieve from pain and isolation, and transcend their differences, but eventually the political baggage of class, gender, religion, culture, and national identity cannot be kept out of their relationship. HE returns to Beirut and SHE goes to Belfast to be at her dying aunt's bedside. Potter first wrote a five minute script, which became the central scene of the film. It takes place in an underground garage, where on a personal level the imbalance of power between the two lovers reveals the rage and humiliation, the bitterness and hatred we see in the larger political scene, where the Other is reduced to an evil enemy. Before parting, the two sling accusations at one another: ‘terrorist,’ ‘imperialist,’ ‘bigot,’ ‘bitch,’ the clichés and stereotypes that reduce and dehumanize the other.
Three structural elements, the language, the chorus, and the camera, have the formal effect of taking the story in the film out of the ordinary realm of life and making us aware that it inhabits a special place, the space of the imagination, specifically imagining what it would be for East and West to come together without scorn, hatred, or assimilation of the other.
Stylistically, the film is like a song, written entirely in verse, mostly in iambic pentameter.
Potter has written