Yes, God, Yes

This charm­ing debut nar­ra­tive fea­ture from writer/​director Karen Maine address­es themes of reli­gion and ado­les­cence from a female per­spec­tive. It was inspired by Maine’s own expe­ri­ences as a Catholic high school­er, and depicts its young heroine’s dis­cov­ery of mas­tur­ba­tion in a whole­some and fre­quent­ly hilar­i­ous way.

Begin­ning with a verse from the Book of Rev­e­la­tion, which is duly fol­lowed by a verse about ​“toss­ing a sal­ad”, the film’s sub­tle satire of sex­u­al moral­i­ty in Amer­i­ca feels long over­due. Set in the Mid­west dur­ing the ear­ly 2000s, we fol­low sweet 16-year-old Alice (Natalia Dyer) as she attends her devout school and seeks redemp­tion from her guilt-rid­den, pro­fane AOL chat. Spi­ralling into a pit of shame when lewd, racy images enter her thoughts, Alice must soon con­front a part of her­self that seems to fly in the face of her and her school’s faith in ​‘God’s plan.’

Enrolling in a retreat to the semi-fic­tion­alised Kirkos organ­ised by her school to help over­come her sin­ful urges of self-plea­sure, Alice spends a long week­end strength­en­ing her rela­tion­ship with Jesus. But she quick­ly begins to doubt both her­self and the pious peo­ple around her. After devel­op­ing a crush on the ath­let­ic Chris (Wolf­gang Novo­gratz) and dis­cov­er­ing that the most enthu­si­as­tic Catholics in her group are con­tra­dict­ing the school’s teach­ings, Alice even­tu­al­ly comes to terms with the one change she has long neglect­ed: the one hap­pen­ing with­in her.

Dyer gives a relat­able per­for­mance in the lead role, fill­ing the shoes of the inno­cent and naïve Alice in a way that ele­vates the film above the aver­age teen com­e­dy. As she devel­ops from a timid, mixed-up girl into a dar­ing and con­fi­dent woman, Yes, God, Yes sub­verts the ​“good-girl” stereo­type so often seen in female-cen­tric com­ing-of-age films. Cru­cial­ly, Maine doesn’t shy away from show­ing the awk­ward­ness and messi­ness of grow­ing up, and in doing so her film becomes a humor­ous yet pow­er­ful state­ment on female body empow­er­ment. Keep­ing an open mind when it comes to mak­ing mis­takes should always be encouraged.

In treat­ing mas­tur­ba­tion as some­thing entire­ly nat­ur­al, Maine push­es the idea that when a person’s curios­i­ty is sup­pressed they lose a sense of who they are and, in time, even their agency. This is what makes Yes, God, Yes so rad­i­cal. While Alice is ini­tial­ly fear­ful that her new­found sex­u­al free­dom might send her to Hell, it is in fact her social envi­ron­ment that pos­es the great­est threat to her. Turn­ing a very real teenage strug­gle into some­thing short and sweet, this is a film that will pro­vide instant relief for those who so des­per­ate­ly need it.