Yes, God Yes

Attending a strict Catholic high school in midwest America, teenager Alice as played by Natalia Dyer, is continually taught that premarital sex is a sin. Eternal damnation and the fiery pits of hell await anyone who would engage in such acts of carnal lust – and yet everyone around her is talking about it. However, things get further out of hand when she is falsely accused of performing a sex act on another pupil. 

Swallowing both her pride and sense of injustice, Alice agrees to attend the fabled “Kirkos” retreat. But will four days and nights of intense bible-bashing put her back on the path to righteousness or straight into the arms of the devil himself? Let’s see…

Yes, God, Yes is a guilty pleasure that doesn’t need to be enjoyed alone...

With its twin targets of Catholicism and hypocrisy and a side of order of school girl angst, Yes, God, Yes is a far more rewarding film than the film’s marketing might initially suggest. Effortlessly skewering increasing contentious and complex moral arguments as it goes along, Obvious Child director Karen Maine’s employs a similarly deft touch as she did in her 2014 debut. 

Made all the more enjoyable by Stranger Things’ Natalia Dyer in the lead role of Alice, Yes, God, Yes is a guilty pleasure that doesn’t need to be enjoyed alone. In tandem with the film’s tone, Dyer believable balances a young girl’s innocence with a nascent sense for tackling the hypocrisy she finds around her.

Without either needing to graphically represent its subjects of masturbation, fellatio and other suppressed sexual desires, it’s safe to say that the only fist biting you’ll be doing in this film is the suppression of your laughter. So, whilst the appearance of Gina’s Bar at the bottom of the road, might feel a little too convenient, even that gets an easy pass for the ensuing exchange between Alice and Susan Blackwell’s delightfully-dry biker girl.

Slight and a little unpresuming upon in its arrival, Yes, God, Yes is that really, surprising treat that manages to tiptoe through the theological tripwires by cutting through all the BS in Alice’s path. 

Should you see it?

Yes, God, Yes.