Yes, God, Yes

Released 24th July 2020, Yes, God, Yes follows young Catholic girl Alice as she begins her sexual awakening. Despite the raunchy implications of teenagers’ sexual awakening, the film manages to limit its sexual imagery to a minimum that achieves its purpose but does not venture into gratuity. As the premise insinuates, the narrative delivers resonant themes of religion, sex, relationships and hypocrisy. Unfortunately, being a youth based narrative, there are a handful of tropes that befall the narrative and subsequently suck you out of the film due to the cringe-factor; the film is at its strongest when it focusses on Alice and her personal experiences in the narrative. Alice is played well by Natalia Dyer; she is far from Oscar-worthy in her performance but she illustrates her character beats well and possesses a believable awkwardness in the face of sexual norms when necessary.

Francesca Reale acts as Alice’s best friend Laura with a decent performance also; this performance standard spans most of the cast to be honest. Wolfgang Novogratz is fine as love-interest Chris, Alisha Boe is fine as religious youth-leader Nina, Parker Wielding is really bad as the scandalous Wade and Allison Shrum’s Heather is laughably bad in her performance. Timothy Simons was rather strong in his performance as Father Murphy; he had a sustained and calm vocal demeanour throughout the film and his facial performance is consolidated (notably the final 5 minutes). Susan Blackwell delivers the strongest performance… in a 5 minute window. She plays ex-Catholic Gina and provides a kindred spirit for Alice to confide in about her religious qualms and sexual confusions; she feels very genuine in her performance and she has a strong chemistry with Dyer.

The production design and cinematography do a good job in encapsulating the religious atmosphere of Alice’s community; this, as well as the script, also enables people who are not particularly religious (such as myself) to understand the norms provided and used in the narrative. While not memorable, the soundtrack was unique and served its narrative really well with its higher pitches and lofty tracks. Finally, the licensed music is also well implemented in accompanying Alice’s ‘taboo’ practises with heavier or louder music. Overall, Yes, God, Yes is one of the better examples of a teen-flick with positive messages about sexual understanding and religious boundaries