''Yes, God, Yes'' is a 2019 American comedy-drama film written and directed by

Karen Maine Karen Maine (born June 15, 1985) is an American film director and screenwriter known for ''Obvious Child'' and '' Yes, God, Yes''. Career Maine co-wrote the 2014 film ''Obvious Child'' and the 2009 short film it's based on. Maine wrote and di ...

and starring

Natalia Dyer Natalia Danielle Dyer (born January 13, 1995) is an American actress. She is known for starring as Nancy Wheeler in the Netflix science fiction horror series ''Stranger Things'' (2016–present), in addition to her starring role in the comedy-dr ...

. It is Maine's directorial debut, based on her 2017 short film of the same name also starring Dyer. The film premiered at the

SXSW Film Festival South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, T ...

on March 8, 2019. It was released in selected

drive-in theater A drive-in theater or drive-in cinema is a form of cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers can view movi ...

s and

virtual cinema Virtual cinema is a video-on-demand streaming service facilitated by independent film distributors and art-house theaters to release new films and share profits. Under the service, part of the admission price supports a physically located theater. ...

s on July 24, 2020, before launching digitally and on

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of ...

on July 28, 2020. The film was made available on

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fi ...

on October 22, 2020.

Plot

It is the fall of 2000. Alice is a sexually inexperienced but curious junior at a strict

Midwestern The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...

co-ed Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

Catholic high school, where Father Murphy instructs her Morality class that any sexual activity not aimed toward procreation within a heterosexual marriage is a sin, with eternal damnation as punishment. She struggles with accepting her burgeoning feelings of sexual desire after both Father Murphy and her best friend, Laura, cause her to feel ashamed of them. The following Monday, the school is abuzz with a rumor that Alice "tossed the salad" of a classmate, Wade, at Laura's party over the weekend. Alice denies this, admitting to not knowing what the phrase means. The rumor reaches Mrs. Veda, who prevents Alice from serving at

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

. Later that day, during the

sacrament of reconciliation The Sacrament of Penance (also commonly called the Sacrament of Reconciliation or Confession) is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church (known in Eastern Christianity as sacred mysteries), in which the faithful are absolved from s ...

, Alice confesses

venial sin According to Catholicism, a venial sin is a lesser sin that does not result in a complete separation from God and eternal damnation in Hell as an unrepented mortal sin would. A venial sin consists in acting as one should not, without the actual inc ...

s to Father Murphy and receives a light penance of twenty prayers, which she immediately and fervently fulfills in the school chapel, Father Murphy and Mrs. Veda's words about sex echoing in her mind. Alice and Laura both decide to attend the school's next "Kirkos" spiritual retreat— Alice to return to the path of righteousness, and Laura to be accepted by Nina, a popular senior. When they arrive on the retreat campgrounds, Laura is excited to find that Nina is a retreat leader, while Alice eyes Chris, a hunky senior who is also a retreat leader. Chris is friendly and enthusiastic, and after Alice is assigned to his group, the two begin to bond. That night, while playing on her contraband cell phone, Alice accidentally discovers that she can pleasure herself using her phone's vibrating feature; however, she stops soon after looking at the

crucifix A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...

hanging in her room. On the second day of the retreat, Alice fakes an injury on a hike to get closer to Chris. Nina confiscates Alice's phone; and, as a punishment, Father Murphy assigns Alice to cleaning duties around the retreat house. Once she is alone, she logs onto an AOL

chat room The term chat room, or chatroom (and sometimes group chat; abbreviated as GC), is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology, ranging from ...

from Father Murphy's office computer to ask what "tossing salad" means; before she can find out, the sound of footsteps causes her to hastily shut off the computer and leave. She runs into Nina, who lightheartedly guilts Alice about Alice's presumed sexual encounter with Wade, another instance of Alice's inability to be free of the rumor even while "on Jesus's time". On the third day of the retreat, Father Murphy announces his discovery of an explicit chat on his computer; of course, no one claims responsibility. He later pushes Alice to confess to acting on her sexual temptations with Wade, and doesn't believe her insistence that nothing happened. Alice confronts Wade about his complicity in the rumor's spread by failing to deny it, and he leaves without admitting his fault or apologizing. Again on cleaning duty, Alice witnesses Nina kissing, then fellating, another senior leader in the woods; Alice shares this with Laura, who refuses to believe Alice, accuses Alice of breaking into Father Murphy's office, and ends their friendship, calling Alice a "pervy psycho". Alice returns to Father Murphy's office and frames Wade for the earlier break-in; while hiding to make her escape, she catches Father Murphy masturbating to a pornographic video saved on his computer. Outside, finding herself alone with Chris, Alice kisses him, but he becomes overwhelmed and runs away. That night, Alice flees the campgrounds and stumbles upon a

lesbian bar A lesbian bar (sometimes called a "women's bar") is a drinking establishment that caters exclusively or predominantly to lesbian women. While often conflated, the lesbian bar has a history distinct from that of the gay bar. Significance Les ...

, where she and the owner, Gina, commiserate about how the fear of damnation can warp an adolescent's development. Gina counsels Alice and gives her a ride back to the retreat, encouraging Alice to look into colleges on the

West West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

and East Coasts and finally assuaging Alice's curiosity about what "tossing salad" means. On the last day of the retreat, Alice befriends a socially awkward classmate while Father Murphy pulls Wade aside. With Wade on the hook for the explicit chat incident, Laura makes peace with Alice. At a whole-group sharing session, Alice reminds the retreat attendees that everyone is "hiding stuff" and implores them to treat each other with honesty and respect, as Jesus wanted. Back at school, Alice reassures a still-uncomfortable Chris that they can just be friends. Returning to reconciliation with Father Murphy, Alice boldly reveals that while on the retreat she saw a video of people having sex—both of them knowing, but not discussing, the implications of her confession. Father Murphy assigns a heavier penance of one hundred prayers, but instead of remaining in the chapel, Alice goes home to rewatch and masturbate to the sex scene in ''

Titanic RMS ''Titanic'' was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, Unit ...

''.

Cast

Reception

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "Natalia Dyer's charming performance – and writer-director Karen Maine's sensitive work – will leave audiences saying ''Yes, God, Yes'' to this coming-of-age dramedy." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He firs ...

the New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

called the film a "remarkable" first feature for writer and director

. Brody included the film on his list of the best films of 2020.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 8949056 2019 films 2019 comedy-drama films 2019 directorial debut films 2019 independent films 2010s coming-of-age comedy-drama films 2010s sex comedy films 2010s teen comedy-drama films American coming-of-age comedy-drama films American independent films American sex comedy films American teen comedy-drama films 2010s English-language films Films about sexual repression Features based on short films Films critical of the Catholic Church Films set in the 2000s Religious comedy films Teen sex comedy films 2010s American films